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Conflict of Laws 
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The written observations submitted in the Gambazzi case
Posted on November 19, 2009Many thanks to Prof. Koji Takahashi for sending the following text and the files with the written observations submitted in the Gambazzi case. The written observations submitted to the European Court of Justice are normally unpublished. Earlier this year, I obtained the observations submitted in Case C-394/07 Gambazzi by the United Kingdom, the Republic of Italy [...
Anti-suit Injunction Issued By US Court
Posted on November 18, 2009The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit recently decided the case of Applied Medical v. The Surgical Company (available here), which raised the issue whether a district court abused its discretion in denying an anti-suit injunction. In short form, the facts were that two companies entered into a purchasing relationship that was [...
Failure of the Hague Abduction Convention: M.J. Carrascosa?s fate
Posted on November 18, 2009M. J. Carrascosa and her ex-husband P. Innes met in a bar in New Jersey in 1999. They married that year in Spain and returned to the U.S., where they both worked. Their daughter V. was born in April 2000. The couple separated in 2004. The parties reached a settlement under which the child would live [...
Immunity of CIA Agents for Abduction in Italy
Posted on November 17, 2009There are interesting posts on this issue at EJIL: Talk! by Apo Akande and Marko Milanovic. … an Italian Court has convicted 23 American agents (including the former head of the CIA in Milan) and 2 Italian intelligence agents for their part in the abduction and rendition of a muslim cleric Abu Omar...
Third Issue of 2009?s Revue Critique de Droit International Privé
Posted on November 14, 2009The last issue of the Revue critique de droit international privé was just released. It contains three articles and several casenotes. The full table of content can be found here. The first article is authored by Professor Anne Sinay Cytermann, who teaches at Paris V University...
Dámaso Ruiz-Járabo Colomer
Posted on November 13, 2009Advocate General Dámaso Ruiz-Jarabo Colomer has passed away in Luxembourg. Born in 1949, Mr Dámaso Ruiz-Jarabo Colomer was Judge and then Member of the Consejo General del Poder Judicial (General Council of the Judiciary of Spain). He worked as professor of Administrative Law and served as Head of the Private Office of the President of the Consejo [...
Conference on the Role of Ethics in International Law
Posted on November 12, 2009Some of our readers will be interested in the following conference this Friday in Washington, D.C. The Role of Ethics in International Law Event Information Friday, November 13, 2009 / 8:30 AM Tillar House/Cosmos Club Washington, D.C. Each year, the International Legal Theory Interest Group of the American Society of International Law convenes a special conference to consider an important [...
Publication: Hess, Europäisches Zivilprozessrecht
Posted on November 12, 2009Prof. Dr. Burkhard Hess (Heidelberg) has published a comprehensive work on European Law of Civil Procedure: Europäisches Zivilprozessrecht (C.F. Müller 2010. XXXII, 752 pages, Hardcover 128 EUR; ISBN 978-3-8114-3304-5) The publication provides an analysis of the European Community’s legislative competences including the new legal situation under the Treaty of Lisbon, the different instruments of European procedural law, their [...
And the Winner Is ?
Posted on November 11, 2009The awards of the most noticeable cases of the ECJ go to: Centros: 5 votes and Gasser: 5 votes But let’s congratulate also: Owusu: 3 votes Krombach: 2 votes Related posts:Most Noticeable Cases of the ECJ On Monday November 23rd, 2009, the Master in European...
Most Noticeable Cases of the ECJ
Posted on November 10, 2009On Monday November 23rd, 2009, the Master in European Litigation of the university of Luxembourg will celebrate its tenth anniversary. One of various talks to be given throughout the afternoon will present and discuss the Ten Most Noticeable Cases of the European Court of Justice in the Last Decade...
Netherlands Proposal on Private International Law (?Book 10?)
Posted on November 09, 2009A Dutch Proposal on Private International Law, to be included as Book 10 of the Civil Code of the Netherlands, has been put before Parliament (Tweede Kamer, 2009-2010, 32137, Vastellings- en Invoeringswet Boek 10 Burgerlijk Wetboek; with Memory van Toelichting/Explanatory Memorandum)...
Publication: International Jurisdiction and Commercial Litigation.
Posted on November 09, 2009International Jurisdiction and Commercial Litigation. Uniform Rules for Contract Disputes, by Hélène van Lith, T.M.C. Asser Press (distributed by Cambridge University Press), 2009. This interesting book includes a comprehensive analysis of the basic approaches to international jurisdiction in commercial contracts, and compares the jurisdictional systems of major continental European countries, the UK, the US and the Brussels [...
Annual Conference of the American Association of Private International Law (ASADIP)
Posted on November 09, 2009The American Association of Private International Law (Asociación americana de derecho internacional privado ASADIP) will hold its third annual conference “International Business Law in a time of change” on 12 and 13 November in Venezuela, Isla de Margarita)...
Time to Update the Rome I Regulation
Posted on November 06, 2009The Council has adopted a corrigendum to all versions of the Rome I Regulation to correct what appears to be an “obvious error”. Art. 28, which had previously provided that the Regulation would apply to contracts concluded “after” (French: “après”; German: “nach”) 17 December 2009, will now refer to contracts concluded “as from” (French: “à compter [...
Bonanza at the British Institute
Posted on November 05, 2009There’s plenty for private international law aficionados to devour in programme of forthcoming events at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law. First, on Friday 6 November, Jonathan Faull, Director General of the Commission Justice, Freedom and Security (JLS) Directorate is giving the Chalfen Memorial Lecture on “Law-making in Brussels”, giving perhaps an insight as [...
Unfair arbitration clause before the ECJ
Posted on November 01, 2009In a recent decision of October 6, 2009 (C 40/08 – Asturcom Telecomunicaciones SL v. Maria Cristina Rodríguez Nogueira) the European Court of Justice held that a national court or tribunal hearing an action for enforcement of an arbitration award which has become final and was made in the absence of the consumer is required [...
New Journal of International Dispute Settlement
Posted on October 29, 2009Oxford University Press will publish a new Journal of International Dispute Settlement from 2010 onwards. The General Editors will be Geneva based scholars Gabrielle Kaufman-K0hler and Joost Pauwelyn, with Thomas Schultz being the Managing Editor. Since the 1980s, a radical development has taken place in international dispute settlement...
Krombach: an Update on the Efficacy of Private Enforcement in Criminal Law
Posted on October 26, 2009As I promised readers to keep them updated on the recent developments in the Bamberski - Krombach case, and as it seems that there is not as much media coverage of the case outside of France as there is in France, here are the latest news. First and most importantly, the French media has reported that Krombach will be [...
Bertoli: Party Autonomy and the Rome II Regulation
Posted on October 25, 2009Paolo Bertoli (University of Insubria) has published two interesting articles (in English) on the role of party autonomy in the Rome II regulation. Here are the references: Choice of Law by the Parties in the Rome II Regulation, in Rivista di diritto internazionale, 2009, pp...
New Title of De Conflictu Legum Collection
Posted on October 23, 2009Prof. Laura Carballo Piñeiro (University of Santiago de Compostela) has just published her monograph entitled Las acciones colectivas y su eficacia extraterritorial. Problemas de recepción y transplante de las class actions en Europa (Collective actions and their extraterritorial effectiveness...
Surprise? Yes and No
Posted on October 22, 2009I am grateful to Horatia Muir Watt, a professor of private international and comparative law at the Paris Institute of Political Science, to have accepted to comment on the recent In Zone Brands decision of the Cour de cassation ruling that an American anti-suit injunction could be declared enforceable in France...
Dr Krombach?s Final (?) Contribution to the European Judicial Area
Posted on October 21, 2009Last week-end, Dr. Dieter Krombach was found in the street, tied up, in front of a court in Mulhouse, France, in the middle of the night. What was he doing there, you may wonder? Well, André Bamberski has now revealed that he had the 74 year old German doctor kidnapped in Germany and brought to France...
US Court Refuses to Enforce Nicaraguan Judgment
Posted on October 21, 2009On October 20, 2009, the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida issued an order in the case of Osorio v. Dole Food Company denying recognition of a $97 million Nicaraguan judgment under the Florida Uniform Out-of-country Foreign Money-Judgments Recognition Act (Florida Recognition Act)...
The Execution of the Anti-Suit Injunction
Posted on October 20, 2009I am grateful to Thomas Raphael, a barrister at 20 Essex Street and the author of a major work on The Anti-Suit Injunction, to have accepted to comment on the recent In Zone Brands decision of the Cour de cassation. King Duncan: Is execution done on Cawdor? Are not Those in commission yet return’d? Malcolm: [...
Arbitration of reinsurance disputes in Australia
Posted on October 20, 2009In Australia, arbitration clauses in most contracts of insurance (other than marine insurance) are rendered void by s 43 of the federal Insurance Contracts Act 1984. However, that Act expressly excludes reinsurance contracts. Accordingly, for many years, practitioners assumed that arbitration clauses in reinsurance contracts were enforceable in Australia...
Conference on Human Rights and Tort Law
Posted on October 20, 2009The Institute for European Tort Law (Vienna) organises a Conference on Human Rights and Tort Law which will take place on 1 December 2009 in Vienna. The conference programme and detailed information on booking etc. as well as a registration form can be found here...
French Court Agrees with U.S. Anti-suit Injunction
Posted on October 19, 2009After the West Tankers decision, common lawyers might have thought that continental lawyers had found the final support they needed to conclude that anti-suit injunctions are evil remedies and that they now have a license to chase them. Well, that would not be true, as this judgment delivered by the French Supreme court for private and [...
Latest Issue of ?Rabels Zeitschrift?
Posted on October 17, 2009The latest issue of the Rabels Zeitschrift (Vol. 73, No. 4, October 2009) is a special issue on the occasion of the 60th birthday of Professor Jürgen Basedow and contains the following articles: Dietmar Baetge: Contingency Fees – An Economic Analysis of the Federal Constitutional Court’s Decision Authorising Attorney Contingency Fees – the English abstract reads [...
Text of the Commission?s Proposal on Succession and Wills Finally Available
Posted on October 16, 2009Following our previous post on the presentation by the Commission of the Proposal for a regulation on succession and wills (COM(2009) 154 fin. of 14 October 2009), the text of the Proposal has been made available on the PreLex website, where the codecision procedure has been filed under no...
European Commission Presents Proposal on Succession and Wills
Posted on October 14, 2009According to a press release by the DG Freedom, Security and Justice (IP/09/1508), the long-awaited Proposal for a Regulation on succession and wills, whose presentation, initially expected in last March, had been significantly delayed, was finally released on 14 October 2009 by the European Commission...
Moving to France to Bypass German Insolvency (and Tax) Law
Posted on October 14, 2009On 16 September 2008, the Court of Appeal of Colmar (Alsace) ruled that a German debtor could not benefit from French insolvency law, as he had apparently moved to France for that sole reason. Had he followed the advice of http://www.insolvenz-frankreich...
Conferences on International Family Law at the French Cour de cassation
Posted on October 13, 2009In November, two conferences will be held on family law at the French Supreme Court for private and criminal matters (Cour de cassation). Access is free, although participants should register in advance. Speeches will be delivered in French. The first conference will be held on November 9, from 9:30 am until 5:30 pm...
Croatian Conference on Brussels I
Posted on October 12, 2009Institute of European and Comparative Law of the University of Rijeka Faculty of Law and the Croatian Comparative Law Association are organising the international conference titled The Brussels I Regulation: Challenges for Croatian Judiciary. The conference program covers the topics concerned with general issues and special heads of jurisdiction under the Brussels I Regulation, with [...
The Mess of Manifest Disregard
Posted on October 11, 2009What is the impact of the much commented decision of the U.S. Supreme Court Hall Street Associates v. Mattel Inc. on the doctrine of manifest disregard of the law? This judicially crafted ground for vacatur of arbitral awards empowers American courts to review awards on the merits, which is an old difference between the common law [...
ECJ: First Ruling on the Rome Convention
Posted on October 06, 2009On March 2008, the Hoge Raad der Nederlanden (Netherlands) made reference for a preliminary ruling to the ECJ, regarding the Convention on the law applicable to contractual obligations, opened for signature in Rome on 19 June 1980 (see Giorgio Buono’s post)...
Jurisdiction to Enjoin a Foreign Website in the EU, Part II
Posted on September 30, 2009In a previous post, I had reported how the French Cour de cassation ruled that French courts had jurisdiction to enjoin a foreign based website to carry on illegal activities in France, and to impose a financial penalty in case of non-compliance. On January 15th, 2009, the same division of the court ruled on another injunction [...
Quebec Court Stays Palestinian Claim Against West Bank Builders
Posted on September 27, 2009Things have certainly been quiet on the Canadian front over the past few months. Ending the lull, in a decision filled with different conflict of laws issues, the Quebec Superior Court held, in Bil’In Village Council and Yassin v. Green Park International Inc...
There are two new references for
Posted on September 25, 2009There are two new references for a preliminary ruling: One on the scope of application of Regulation (EC) 1347/2000 (C-312/09, Michalias) and one on Regulation (EC) No 1206/2001 (C-283/09, Werynski) No related posts.
On 24 September, the AG Opinion
Posted on September 24, 2009On 24 September, the AG Opinion in case C-381/08 (Car Trim) on Art. 5 (1) (b) Brussels I has been published: Contracts for the delivery of goods to be produced or manufactured are to be classified as a sale of goods. See also our previous post on the reference...
Judgment and Reference on Brussels I Regulation
Posted on September 20, 2009The ECJ delivered its judgment in case C-347/08 (Vorarlberger Gebietskrankenkasse) on Artt. 9 (1) (b), 11 (2) Brussels I Regulation on 17 September and held as follows: The reference in Article 11(2) of Council Regulation (EC) No 44/2001 of 22 December 2000 on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters [...
Parallel proceedings in New South Wales and New Zealand arising from relationship breakdown
Posted on September 17, 2009In Du Bray v McIlwraith [2009] NSWSC 888, the New South Wales Supreme Court was faced with the not uncommon circumstance of the breakdown of a relationship with connections to Australia and New Zealand. The parties had lived in a de facto relationship for 14 years, beginning in New Zealand and then in Australia...
Mareva orders over foreign land in the Supreme Court of Victoria
Posted on September 17, 2009In Talacko v Talacko [2009] VSC 349, the Supreme Court of Victoria made Mareva-type orders, restraining the defendants to proceedings pending before the Court from disposing of properties in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Germany. The properties had been owned by the parents of Helena, Peter and Jan Talacko, progressively confiscated by Communist governments in [...
International Comity: Governmental Statements of Interest in Private International Litigation
Posted on September 16, 2009The ongoing case of Khulumani v. Barclay National Bank presents interesting questions concerning the nexus of the public and private in international law. In Khulumani, a large class of South African plaintiffs assert that several multinational corporations (including Daimler, Ford, General Motors, and IBM) aided and abetted apartheid crimes (including torture, extrajudicial killing, and arbitrary denationalization) [...
Judges and Jurists: Reflections on the House of Lords
Posted on September 15, 2009Thursday 5th and Friday 6th November 2009 (Law Society?s Hall, London) This Seminar, to take place at the Law Society?s Hall in London, will mark two events in 2009: the Centenary of the Society of Legal Scholars, and the transition from the House of Lords to the new United Kingdom Supreme Court...
Dublin Up on Rome I
Posted on September 14, 2009Following the conference to take place at University College Dublin this week, details of a second conference to take place in the Irish capital on the subject of the Rome I Regulation have been announced. This conference, organised by Trinity College Dublin, is entitled “The Rome I Regulation on the Law Applicable to Contractual Obligations: [...
Croatia Ratifies Hague Child Protection Convention
Posted on September 14, 2009The report of the Hague Conference is here. Related posts:Greece Ratifies Hague Adoption Convention The report of the Hague Conference is here. ...JHA Council Session (6-7 December 2007): Rome I Regulation and New Hague Convention on the International Recovery of Child Support On 6 and 7 December the Justice and Home...
Greece Ratifies Hague Adoption Convention
Posted on September 13, 2009The report of the Hague Conference is here. Related posts:Nepal Signs 1993 Hague Adoption Convention The report of the Hague Conference is here. ...Mexico First State to Join Hague Choice of Court Convention of 2005 According to recent news published on the website of...
Latest Issue of ?Praxis des Internationalen Privat- und Verfahrensrechts? (5/2009)
Posted on September 13, 2009Recently, the September/October issue of the German law journal ?Praxis des Internationalen Privat- und Verfahrensrechts? (IPRax) was released. It contains the following articles/case notes (including the reviewed decisions): Christoph Althammer: “Verfahren mit Auslandsbezug nach dem neuen FamFG” – the English abstract reads as follows: The new ?Law on procedure in matters of familiy courts and non-litigious matters? (FamFG) [...
Third Issue of 2009?s Journal du Droit International
Posted on September 12, 2009The third issue of French Journal du Droit International (also known as Clunet) has just been released. It contains two articles dealing with conflict issues. The first is authored by Dr. Carine Brière, who lectures at the University of Rouen. It discusses the coordination of sources in the European private international law of contract (Le droit [...
Conference: ?Tendenze e resistenze all?uniformazione del diritto privato e del diritto processuale civile nell?Unione europea? (Padova, 17-18 September)
Posted on September 11, 2009On 17 and 18 September 2009 the Faculty of Law of the University of Padova, in collaboration with the Bar Councils of Padova and Triveneto, will host an international conference on current trends and resistances in the uniformization of European private law and civil procedural law, organised by Profs...
Max Planck Research School: Doctoral Research Positions
Posted on September 09, 2009The Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg, in cooperation with the Institute of Comparative and Private International Law, Ruprecht Karls University of Heidelberg and the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law in Freiburg, is accepting applications for several doctoral research positions in the areas of international [...
Asserting Personal Jurisdiction in Human Rights Cases
Posted on September 09, 2009My colleague Roger Alford has a fascinating post over at the blog Opinio Juris (available here) detailing a recent decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in the case of Bauman v. DaimlerChrysler AG. In that case, a panel of the Ninth Circuit held that a United States federal district court did [...
Research Assistants in Trier
Posted on September 08, 2009The Faculty of Law of the University of Trier (Professor Dr. Jan von Hein) is seeking to recruit two Assistants (PhD students) in Private International Law, Comparative Law or Civil Law/Corporate Law. The candidates should be PhD students who will be expected to work on their doctorate, to teach a few hours per week and [...
Dublin Conference on Rome I and Brussels I Regulations
Posted on September 07, 2009The Commercial Law Centre at University College Dublin has arranged a morning conference next Thursday (17 September 2009, 8:45am-1pm) dealing with the Rome I and Brussels I Regulations. According to the conference materials on the CLC’s website: The Rome I Regulation on the Law Applicable to Contractual Obligations, replacing the Rome Convention comes into effect on 17th [...
ERA Conference on Stockholm Programme
Posted on September 02, 2009The Academy of European Law (ERA) will host another interesting conference titled New Horizons for Civil Justice in Europe: Towards the “Stockholm Programme” The conference will discuss the key issues for the Stockholm Programme in terms of cooperation in civil matters as presented in the Commission communication COM (2009) 262 of 10 June 2009, such as mutual recognition abolishment [...
ERA Annual Conference on Private International and Business Law
Posted on September 01, 2009The Annual Conference on Private International and Business Law of the Academy of European Law will take place on 8-9 October in Trier. ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON PRIVATE INTERNATIONAL AND BUSINESS LAW ROME I, BRUSSELS I, WEST TANKERS AND CARTESIO The seminar will provide practitioners with an analysis of the latest developments in both legislation and jurisprudence in private international [...
Conference on European Procedural Law
Posted on August 31, 2009The Institute for Comparative Law, Conflict of Laws and International Business Law (University of Heidelberg) and the European Commission will organise the 2nd Conference on European Procedural Law in Heidelberg titled The Future of European Civil Procedural Law __ Reforming the Regulation Brussels I The conference will address in particular the following topics: the abolition of exequatur proceedings defendants in third [...
Recent Australian Journal Articles
Posted on August 30, 2009Martin Davies, ‘Reflections on the Past Decade of Transnational Litigation’ (2009) 10 Melbourne Journal of International Law 46 The brief article begins: The past decade of transnational litigation has seen a consolidation of the trend towards disputes about venue...
Substance and Procedure: The Statute of Frauds in Australia
Posted on August 30, 2009A recent decision of the Western Australian Court of Appeal is apparently the first Australian decision to address the correctness of the decision in Leroux v Brown (1852) 12 CB 801; 138 ER 1119 after the High Court of Australia?s decision in John Pfeiffer Pty Ltd v Rogerson (2000) 203 CLR 503, which adopted a [...
Foreign-Domiciled Testators: Jurisdiction over Family Maintenance Claims
Posted on August 30, 2009In each of the Australian states, legislation exists to recognise that testators have a moral duty to make provision in their wills for certain kinds of dependents and other claimants, and to empower such claimants to make claims upon the estate of testators who failed to make appropriate provision in their wills...
Brussels I Regulation ? The UK Parliament has its say
Posted on August 29, 2009The House of Lords’ influential European Union Committee (chaired by Lord Mance) has published a report on the Commission’s Green Paper on the Brussels I Regulation. The report scrutinises the Green Paper, in light of evidence presented by representatives of the UK Ministry of Justice (Lord Bach and Oliver Parker) and Richard Fentiman of Cambridge [...
Hague Academy ? Programme for 2010
Posted on August 27, 2009The summer is coming to an end. So it is already time to think about next summer. In case you are already checking for flights and hotels at your favorite sea resort in July 2010, the Hague Academy has already posted the details of its next Summer Programme...
BIICL event: Lis Pendens in International Litigation
Posted on August 27, 2009The British Institute of International and Comparative Law (BIICL) hosts an event titled ?Lis Pendens in International Litigation? as part of the Herbert Smith Private International Law Seminar Series at the BIICL. What is this event about? The question of international lis pendens has long been controversial, but has taken on new and urgent importance in [...
Opinion of the Comittee of the Regions on Consumer Rights: quite a critical view on the Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on consumer rights
Posted on August 25, 2009The opinion of the Committee of the Regions on Consumer Rights has been published in today’s OJ, C 200/76. Notwithstanding the approval of the Commissions proposal aiming to consolidate existing consumer protection directives into a single set of rules (8 october 2008) the Committee expresses a quite critical opinion on several basic points of the proposal, [...
Second Issue of 2009?s Revue Critique de Droit International Privé
Posted on August 25, 2009The second issue of the Revue Critique de Droit International Privé was released earlier this month. It contains three articles, but only two deal with conflict issues. The first is authored by Tunisian professor Sami Bostanji. It addresses the Survival of Communitarism in Judicial Application of Tunisian Private International Law (La survivance du communautarisme dans l’application judiciaire du droit international [...
Chinese Judgment Enforced in the United States
Posted on August 24, 2009On August 12, 2009, the United States District Court for the Central District of California issued a judgment enforcing a $6.5 million dollar Chinese judgment against an American corporate defendant under California’s version of the Uniform Foreign Money Judgments Recognition Act...
PIL conference @ UJ
Posted on August 24, 2009The final programme for the PIL conference at the University of Johannesburg, 8-11 Sept 09, is now available at www.uj.ac.za/law. Related posts:Hague Conference on PIL signs agreement with UJ A cooperaPIL conference in Johannesburg PIL confePIL conference at the University of Johannesburg Comparati
Narrowing the Extraterritorial Reach of U.S. Patent Laws: Cardiac Pacemakers Inc. v. St. Jude Medical Inc.
Posted on August 21, 2009In a follow-on development from a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court case that was previously discussed on this site (Microsoft Corp. v AT&T Corp.), an en banc decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Wednesday has again narrowed the reach of U...
Pleading Alien Tort Statute Cases in the US: Heightened Pleading in International Cases
Posted on August 19, 2009As recently discussed on this blog, the US Supreme Court case of Ashcroft v. Iqbal will have important ramifications for private international law cases filed in US federal courts. That case requires that a complaint state a “plausible” claim for relief to survive a motion to dismiss...
Publication: Mills on The Confluence of Public and Private International Law
Posted on August 19, 2009Alex Mills (Selwyn College, Cambridge) has published a monograph, based upon his doctorate, on The Confluence of Public and Private International Law: Justice, Pluralism and Subsidiarity in the International Constitutional Ordering of Private Law (2009, Cambridge University Press)...
Hamburg Lectures on Maritime Affairs
Posted on August 17, 2009In the period 04.09. – 21.10. 2009 this year?s Hamburg Lectures on Maritime Affairs, organised by the International Max Planck Research School for Maritime Affairs and the International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), will take place in Hamburg...
A Deepening Split Of Authority Over The Burden of Proof In The Federal Long-Arm Statute (And The Continuing Debate Over the Broad Assertion of Personal Jurisdiction Stemming From Patent Applications)
Posted on August 13, 2009The Federal Circuit this week has taken a side in a long-running circuit split over the burden of proving the applicability of Fed. R. Civ. P. 4(k)(2), the federal long-arm statute that provides for service and personal jurisdiction for federal causes of action whenever a foreign defendant is not amenable to suit in any one [...
Rabels Zeitschrift: Special Issue on the Communitarisation of Private International Law
Posted on August 05, 2009The latest issue (Vol. 73, No. 3) of the German law journal Rabels Zeitschrift is a special issue dedicated to the communitarisation of private international law and contains the following articles (written in English): Heinz-Peter Mansel: Kurt Lipstein (1909-2006) Jürgen Basedow: The Communitarisation of Private International Law – Introduction Jan von Hein: Of Older Siblings and Distant Cousins: [...
Choice of law clauses are not promissory
Posted on August 04, 2009The recent Australian case of Ace Insurance Ltd v Moose Enterprise Pty Ltd [2009] NSWSC 724 discusses an important question of principle concerning contractual choice of law clauses: are they promissory terms of the contract or merely declaratory of the parties’ intention? The case arose out of class action litigation presently pending in the United States...
Civil Procedure (Amendment) Rules 2009
Posted on August 04, 2009Some changes to the CPR Rules, effective October 2009. Nothing of great importance to conflicts, although note the new 68.2A on requests to apply the urgent preliminary ruling procedure to the ECJ. Related posts:Urgent Procedure Adopted for Preliminary Rulings in the Area of Freedom, Security & Justice The excelConference on European Civil Procedure for Civil Law [...
Italian Commentary on Rome I Regulation
Posted on August 03, 2009An extensive and thorough commentary on the Rome I Regulation – the first, to the best of my knowledge, to provide an article-by-article analysis of the rules of the new EC instrument on the law applicable to contractual obligations – has been published in the latest issue (no...
An English translation of the Introductory
Posted on July 31, 2009An English translation of the Introductory Act to the German Civil Code (EGBGB) (as amended up to 17 March 2009) is now available here. Related posts:Law Governing Name in German Conflicts German pr
Two new IPL Regulations
Posted on July 31, 2009Today’s Official Journal (L, nº 200), publishes two new IPL Regulations: REGULATION (EC) No 662/2009 OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL of 13 July 2009 establishing a procedure for the negotiation and conclusion of agreements between Member States and third countries on particular matters concerning the law applicable to contractual and non- contractual [...
Article on Passengers? Rights
Posted on July 25, 2009Jens Karsten (Brussels/Oslo) has written a paper on recent developments in the field of European passenger law with references to PIL issues. ?Im Fahrwasser der Athener Verordnung zu Seereisenden: Neuere Entwicklungen des europäischen Passagierrechts? has been published in the German law journal ?Verbraucher und Recht? (VuR) vol...
United States Congress Considering Legislation Relating to Pleading
Posted on July 23, 2009As was recently reported on this blog, this past May the United States Supreme Court decided the case of Ashcroft v. Iqbal, which will have relevance for pleading private international law cases in United States federal courts. The five-member majority in Iqbal (Justice Kennedy joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia, Thomas, & Alito) made [...
Publication: ?La nuova disciplina comunitaria della legge applicabile ai contratti (Roma I)?
Posted on July 23, 2009The papers presented at the conference on the Rome I Regulation hosted in November 2008 by the University of Venice ?Ca? Foscari? (see here for the webcast) have been published by the Italian publishing house Giappichelli under the editorship of Nerina Boschiero: “La nuova disciplina comunitaria della legge applicabile ai contratti (Roma I)“...
Publications on international surrogate motherhood
Posted on July 22, 2009A paper of Prof. Anna Quiñones Escámez (Pompeu Fabra Univerity, Barcelona) has just been published in the Spanish electronic magazine InDret. The English abstract reads as follows: The following pages focus on Private International Law issues raised by the Resolution of the Spanish “Dirección General de los Registros y del Notariado” (DGRN) of last February the 18th...
Australia to accede to Hague Convention on Service Abroad
Posted on July 22, 2009On 25 June 2009, the Commonwealth Attorney General tabled the Hague Convention on Service Abroad of Judicial and Extrajudicial Documents in Civil and Commercial Matters 1965 in Parliament. This is the first step to Australia’s becoming a party to the Convention...
ECJ: Judgments in ?Hadadi? and ?Zuid-Chemie BV?
Posted on July 17, 2009Yesterday, the ECJ delivered its judgments in cases C-189/08 (Zuid-Chemie BV v. Philippo’s Mineralenfabriek NV/SA) and C-168/08 (Laszlo Hadadi (Hadady)) 1. Zuid-Chemie concerns the interpretation of Art. 5 (3) Brussels I Regulation. The Hoge Raad der Nederlanden (Netherlands) had referred the following questions to the ECJ: 1...
Publication. Punitive damages: Common Law and Civil Perspectives
Posted on July 16, 2009On a previous post (see here) I gave notice of a Viena Conference on Punitive Damages held in November 2008, organised by the Institute for European Tort Law and chaired by Sir Henry Brooke and Prof. Ken Oliphant. Following this event a book has just been published, entitled “Punitive Damages: Common Law and Civil Law Perspectives”...
Summer Seminar in Urbino
Posted on July 15, 2009The Faculty of Law of the University of Urbino will host this summer its 51st Seminar of European Law. The majority of the courses taught over the two weeks of the seminar (17-29 August) will deal with conflict issues, in particular European regulations...
Round-Up of Canadian Conflicts Publications
Posted on July 15, 2009Readers of this web site might find some of the following publications to be of interest. I have tried to gather togther recent work by Canadian conflicts scholars. Please post a comment if you are aware of another piece. Vaughan Black & Angela Swan, “Concurrent Judicial Jurisdiction: A Race to the Court House or to Judgment?” [...
ECJ: Recent Judgments and References on Brussels I and Brussels II bis
Posted on July 14, 2009I. Judgments on Brussels I: 1. SCT Industri AB i likvidation v. Alpenblume AB (C-111/08) The Högsta domstolen (Sweden) had referred the following question to the ECJ for a preliminary ruling: Is the exclusion under Article 1(2)(b) of Regulation [No 44/2001] of bankruptcy, proceedings relating to the winding-up of insolvent companies or other legal persons, judicial arrangements, [...
Publication: Rossolillo, ?Identità personale e diritto internazionale privato?
Posted on July 13, 2009A very interesting book on conflict issues arising out of personal identity and name has been recently published by the Italian publishing house CEDAM. The volume, “Identità personale e diritto internazionale privato“, is authored by Prof...
Publication: Hartley on International Commercial Litigation
Posted on July 12, 2009Trevor Hartley (LSE) has published a new textbook entitled, International Commercial Litigation: Text, Cases and Materials on Private International Law, published by Cambridge University Press. Here’s the blurb: This carefully structured, practice-orientated textbook provides everything the law student needs to know about international commercial litigation...
European Commission: Area of Freedom, Security and Justice serving the Citizen
Posted on July 12, 2009The communication from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council titled “An area of freedom, security and justice serving the citizen” (COM(2009) 262 final) mentioned already in one of our previous posts, is now available. Of particular interest might be the following passages envisaging a communitarisation of choice of law rules in the field [...
Latest Issue of ?Praxis des Internationalen Privat- und Verfahrensrechts? (4/2009)
Posted on July 11, 2009Recently, the July/August issue of the German legal journal ?Praxis des Internationalen Privat- und Verfahrensrechts? (IPRax) was released. It contains the following articles/case notes (including the reviewed decisions): Anatol Dutta: “Das Statut der Haftung aus Vertrag mit Schutzwirkung für Dritte” – the English abstract reads as follows: The autonomous characterisation of national legal institutions is one of the [...
Does Astreinte Belong to Enforcement? (I)
Posted on July 09, 2009French courts do not have contempt power. When they issue injunctions, the only available tool that they have to ensure compliance is astreinte. Astreinte is a pecuniary penalty which typically accrues per day of non-compliance. For instance, a French commercial court may order a party to do something or to refrain from doing something under a [...
Publication: The University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law
Posted on July 09, 2009The University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law (Volume 30, Number 4) has recently published a symposium in celebration of its anniversary. Private international lawyers will be interested in the following contributions: International Litigation and Arbitration Gary Born, The Principle of Judicial Non-Interference in International Arbitral Proceedings Catherine A...
Sovereign Immunity over French Buildings
Posted on July 07, 2009On November 19, 2008, the French Supreme Court for private matters (Cour de cassation) delivered an interesting judgment on the scope of the sovereign immunity of foreign states in France. The German state was the owner of a building which had been used in the past for the purpose of hosting first a NATO unit (possibly [...
French Court Denies Recognition to American Surrogacy Judgement
Posted on June 30, 2009On 26 February 2009, the Paris Court of Appeal denied recognition to a couple of American judgments which had sanctioned a surrogacy. The Court held that it was contrary to French international public order. In this case, a French couple had found a surrogate mother in Minnesota who had accepted to carry their child...
Petition Granted in Abbott v. Abbott
Posted on June 29, 2009This morning, the United States Supreme Court granted the Petition for Writ of Certiorari in Abbott v. Abbott, a case concerning the role of ne exeat clauses in the Hague Abduction Convention. The grant was urged not only by the petitioner, but also by the Solicitor General on the Court’s invitation...
Anuario Español de Derecho Internacional Privado, vol VIII (2008)
Posted on June 28, 2009The Anuario de Derecho Internacional Privado Español,vol. VIII, 2008 has just been released. These are its contents: Manuel Díez de Velasco Vallejo, ?Adolfo Miaja de la Muela y el Derecho Internacional Privado español. A propósito de su centenario? DOCTRINA Andrea Bonomi ?El Reglamento Roma II y las relaciones con terceros Estados? Pedro J...
C-14/08 Roda Golf v Beach Resort
Posted on June 26, 2009The service of a notarial act, in the absence of legal prcoeedings, falls within the scope of the judicial and extrajudicial documents Reg (EC 1348/2000) according to the ECJ in C-14/08 Roda Golf. Related posts:AG opinion on Roda Golf (Regulation Nº 1348/00) On OctobSpanish Reference for a Preliminary Ruling on the Service Regulation The SpaniComity and the [...
Publication: Collection of Hague Conventions
Posted on June 24, 2009Intersentia have recently published Recueil des Conventions / Collection of Conventions (1951-2009), edited by the Hague Conference. The blurb: This eighth edition of the Collection of Conventions of the Hague Conference contains the most important multilateral treaties entered into under the auspices of the Hague Conference on Private International Law, which has been working on the [...
Brussels I Review ? Illmer and Steinbruck on the Interface Between Brussels I and Arbitration
Posted on June 24, 2009Martin Illmer and Ben Steinbrück are research fellows at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law, Hamburg. They have both published in the area of international arbitration (including their Ph.D. theses). In our brief discussion of the interface between Regulation (EC) No 44/2001 (Brussels I) and arbitration we will focus on the proposals [...
Brussels I Review ? Jonathan Hill
Posted on June 22, 2009Jonathan Hill is Professor of Law at the University of Bristol. He is the author of Cross-Border Consumer Contracts (OUP 2008), The Conflict of Laws (with CMV Clarkson, 3rd edn, OUP 2006), International Commercial Disputes in English Courts (Hart 2005) and is a former editor of Dicey...
Second Issue of 2009?s Journal du Droit International
Posted on June 19, 2009The second issue of French Journal du Droit International (also known as Clunet) has just been released. It contains seevral articles dealing with conflict issues. The author of the first is Anne-Sylvie Courdier-Cuisinier, who lectures at the University of Burgundy...
Brussels I Review ? Loose Ends
Posted on June 18, 2009The final question in the Commission’s Green Paper (which, incidentally, deserves praise for its concise and focussed presentation of the issues), covers other suggestions for reform of the Regulation’s rules not falling under any of the previous headings...
Brussels I Review ? Interface with Arbitration
Posted on June 17, 2009The Brussels I Regulation’s interface with arbitration vies with choice of court agreements as the topic within the Commission’s review having the greatest potential impact on the negotiation and efficient implementation of commercial transactions...
Brussels I Review ? Lis Pendens and Related Actions
Posted on June 15, 2009The fifth topic considered in the Green Paper concerns possible adjustments to the lis pendens rules in Arts. 27 and following of the Brussels I Regulation (excluding aspects specifically related to choice of court agreements). In the Commission’s view: With respect to the general operation of the lis pendens rule, it should be reflected whether the current [...
European Commission: Evaluation of the Hague Programme (and Priorities for the Future Stockholm Programme)
Posted on June 13, 2009On 10 June 2009 the European Commission presented two communications to the Parliament and the Council, evaluating the 2005 Hague Programme and Action Plan (the second multi-annual policy framework for the Area of Justice, Freedom and Security, after the one adopted in 1999 in Tampere) and setting out the priorities for the future Stockholm Programme, [...
Brussels I Review - Provisional Measures
Posted on June 12, 2009The next topic considered in the Green Paper is the treatment of provisional and protective measures under the Regulation. In the Commission’s view: The report describes several difficulties with respect to the free circulation of provisional measures...
Brussels I Review - Intellectual Property
Posted on June 11, 2009The Commission’s fourth question concerns the Regulations treatment of litigation concerning intellectual (industrial) property rights. In its Green Paper, the Commission comments: The possibility to effectively enforce or challenge industrial property rights in the Community is of fundamental importance for the good functioning of the internal market...
Brussels I Review - Choice of Court Agreements
Posted on June 10, 2009Among the issues raised by the Green Paper, those concerning the treatment of choice of court agreements raises are, almost certainly, the most difficult and controversial. In considering possible reforms, a balance must be struck between the advantages, both commercial and in terms of promoting legal certainty, of supporting party autonomy in matters of jurisdiction, [...
Brussels I Review - The Wider International Picture
Posted on June 09, 2009The second topic discussed in the Commission’s Green Paper raises more fundamental questions concerning the treatment under EC law of situations having a material connection with one or more States outside the EC (excluding, for these purposes, the other Contracting States to the Lugano Convention) , including questions of (1) jurisdiction of a Member State [...
Brussels I Review - The Abolition of Exequatur?
Posted on June 08, 2009This is the first of a series of posts soliciting comment on the proposals for reform of the Brussels I Regulation in the Commission’s recent Report and Green Paper. It concerns the possible abolition of all intermediate measures to recognise and enforce judgments (exequatur)...
Brussels I Review - Online Focus Group
Posted on June 08, 2009Many will, by now, have had the opportunity to consider the Commission’s Report and Green Paper on the review of the Brussels I Regulation, if not also the detailed Studies by Professors Hess, Pfeiffer and Schlosser and Nuyts, on which they were based...
The Results of the JHA Council (4-5 June 2009): Bilateral Agreements with Third Countries in PIL matters and Common Frame of Reference (CFR)
Posted on June 06, 2009On 4 and 5 June the Justice and Home Affairs Council held its 2946th session in Luxembourg, the last one under the Czech Presidency. Among the ?Justice? issues, discussed on Friday 5th, two main points are of particular importance as regards the development of European private law and private international law...
Conference: Enlargement of the European Judicial Area to the CEFTA Countries
Posted on June 05, 2009This year, the traditional private international law conference in the South Eastern Europe is hosted by the Faculty of Law of the University of Novi Sad, Serbia. Focusing primarily on the topics related to the enlargement of the European Judicial Area to the CEFTA countries, this conference will also address the newest developments in private [...
Dickinson: Rome II Regulation Monograph Supplement, and our New Consultant Editor
Posted on June 04, 2009Scholarly writings on the new Rome II Regulation have continued to pour in from all Member States, and the ECJ?s recent case law on other civil justice instruments (particularly the Brussels I Regulation) has also addressed issues of relevance to Rome II...
The New Solicitor General and Private International Law Cases: 2008 Term Round-Up
Posted on June 02, 2009Elena Kagan, the new Solicitor General of the United States, had a few notable private international law cases on her desk when she arrived at her new job this past March. By then, the Court had invited the views of the Solicitor General in the first Hague Convention case to garner serious attention since [...
Forum Shopping before International Tribunals
Posted on May 28, 2009As the number of international tribunals increases, the issue of forum shopping is begining to arise quite frequently in public international law. How should it be handled? Are doctrines of private international law useful? If so, which one? It seems that the most common practice, and received wisdom, is to apply the doctrine of lis pendens...
United States Congress Considering Legislation Relating to Foreign Defendants
Posted on May 26, 2009On May 19, 2009, the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts held a hearing entitled “Leveling the Playing Field and Protecting Americans: Holding Foreign Manufacturers Accountable...
ECJ: Judgment on Art. 15 Brussels I (?Ilsinger?)
Posted on May 25, 2009On 14 May 2009, the ECJ delivered its judgment in case C-180/06 (Renate Ilsinger v. Martin Dreschers). The case basically concerns the question whether legal proceedings by which a consumer seeks an order requiring a mail-order company to award a prize apparently won by him - without the award of that prize depending on an order [...
First Issue of 2009?s Revue Critique de Droit International Privé
Posted on May 24, 2009The first issue of the Revue Critique de Droit International Privé was just released. It contains two articles and several case notes. The first article is authored by Dominique Bureau, a professor at Paris II University, and Horatia Muir Watt, a professor at Paris Institute of Political Science (commonly known as Sciences Po)...
Dirty Dancing and Stays of Proceedings
Posted on May 22, 2009A recent judgment of the NSW Supreme Court is as noteworthy for its name and subject-matter as it is for the legal principles involved; namely stay of proceedings on the basis of a foreign exclusive jurisdiction clause. Dance With Mr D Limited v Dirty Dancing Investments Pty Ltd [2009] NSWSC 332 concerned a dispute between producers [...
Australian Lawyers and Overseas Clients
Posted on May 22, 2009An interesting and unusual case before the State Administrative Tribunal of Western Australia contains a significant discussion of the professional obligations of Australian lawyers?especially regarding confidentiality and privilege?while representing overseas clients...
Heightened Pleading Standards in US Private International Law Cases
Posted on May 20, 2009On Monday, the United States Supreme court decided the case of Ashcroft v. Iqbal, which concerned whether current and former federal officials, including FBI Director Robert Mueller and former Attorney General John Ashcroft, are entitled to qualified immunity against allegations they knew of or condoned racial and religious discrimination against individuals detained in the wake [...
Tokyo symposium papers on IP available for download
Posted on May 19, 2009The formerly announced international symposium in Tokyo on the topic of "Intellectual Property and International Civil Litigation" was held some ten days ago and several contributions from the speakers are accessible for download from the official website...
French Conference on Intellectual Property and PIL
Posted on May 18, 2009Professors Cyril Nourissat and Edouard Treppoz will organize a conference at the Faculty of Law of Lyon 3 University on Private International and Intellectual Property (Droit international priv et propri t intellectuelle) on June 4. The morning will be dedicated to choice of law, while the afternoon will address jurisdictional issues...
Conference: International Association of Procedural Law Toronto Conference
Posted on May 16, 2009From June 3-5, 2009, the International Association of Procedural Law is holding its annual conference in Toronto, Canada. Entitled “The Future of Categories–Categories of the Future,” the conference will showcase “leading proceduralists from around the world” who will present “their perspectives on the ways in which procedural reform is precipitating a collapse of the traditional categories [...
Forum Non Conveniens in US Courts
Posted on May 15, 2009On May 1, 2009, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit issued a noteworthy opinion in the consolidated cases of Abad v. Bayer Corp. and Pastor v. Bridgestone/Firestone. See http://www.ca7.uscourts.gov/tmp/NH1FG3UP.pdf. These consolidated appeals raise interesting issues regarding the application of the forum non conveniens doctrine in US courts...
New Zealand issues first e-Apostille
Posted on May 15, 2009The report of the Hague Conference is here. Related posts:First Electronic Apostille in Europe The report of the Hague Conference on Private International Law...Workshop on Cross-border Security over Receivables and Comparative and Private International Law Issues From the conference website: This workshop will provide an in-depth...
Conference: “Il diritto al nome e all’identit personale nell’Unione europea”
Posted on May 14, 2009An interesting conference on issues relating to name and personal identity in private international law and EU law will be hosted by the Faculty of Law of the University of Milan - Bicocca on 22 May 2009 (h. 9:15-13:45): “Il diritto al nome e all’identit personale nell’Unione europea” (Right to Name and Personal Identity in [...
Latest Issue of "Praxis des Internationalen Privat- und Verfahrensrechts" (3/2009)
Posted on May 12, 2009Recently, the May/June issue of the German legal journal "Praxis des Internationalen Privat- und Verfahrensrechts" (IPRax) was released. It contains the following articles/case notes (including the reviewed decisions): Peter Kindler: “Internationales Gesellschaftsrecht 2009: MoMiG, Trabrennbahn, Cartesio und die Folgen” - the English abstract reads as follows: The article summarizes, in a European as well as in a German [...
Postdoctoral Research Position in Louvain
Posted on May 11, 2009The Chair of European Law of the Universit Catholique de Louvain is seeking to recruit a postdoctoral fellow for next academic year. This post is opened in the context of a research project on the relationship between private international law and competition law, which is financed by the European Commission...
Publication: Raphael on The Anti-Suit Injunction
Posted on May 11, 2009The latest in a long line of private international law monographs from OUP is The Anti-Suit Injunction by Thomas Raphael. The description from the OUP site: The first major treatment of anti-suit injunctions, a complex area of private international law Concise chapters and a clearly laid out structure with a selection of useful precedents and templates, designed [...
West Tankers and Indian Courts
Posted on May 08, 2009What is the territorial scope of West Tankers? It certainly applies within the European Union, but does it prevent English Courts from enjoining parties to litigate outside of Europe? In a judgment published yesterday (Shashou & Ors v Sharma ([2009] EWHC 957 (Comm)), Cook J...
Article on Google Book Search Settlement
Posted on May 08, 2009Yesterday’s issue of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) contains an interesting article on the Google Book Search Settlement written by Prof. Burkhard Hess: The settlement concerns a class action lawsuit between Google and - as plaintiffs - the Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers as well as individual authors and publishers about books scanned [...
China Antitrust Gets Global
Posted on May 06, 2009In an interesting Editorial, the Financial Times discussed yesterday recent rulings of Chinese authorities demonstrating their willingness to enforce Chinese anti-monopoly law in respect of global deals. Indeed, the FT reports that two out of three of the deals had only secondary implications in China (other reports on the deals can be found here and here)...
BIICL Seminar on West Tankers
Posted on May 05, 2009The British Institute for International & Comparative Law are hosting a seminar on Tuesday 12th May (17.30-19.30) entitled Enforcing Arbitration Agreements: West Tankers - Where are we? Where do we go from here? Here’s the synopsis: The February 2009 West Tankers ruling of the European Court of Justice has the unintended consequence of disrupting the flow [...
Garsec discontinued
Posted on May 04, 2009Readers may recall that a special leave application from the interesting forum non conveniens case in the New South Wales Court of Appeal, Garsec Pty Ltd v His Majesty The Sultan of Brunei [2008] NSWCA 211; (2008) 250 ALR 682, was to be heard by the High Court...
Ph.D. Grant of the International Max Planck Research School for Maritime Affairs
Posted on May 04, 2009The International Research School for Maritime Affairs at the University of Hamburg will award for the period commencing 1 September 2009 one Ph.D. grant for a term of two years (with a possible one year extension). The particular area of emphasis to be supported by this round of grants is Maritime Law and Law of the [...
Nepal Signs 1993 Hague Adoption Convention
Posted on May 03, 2009The report of the Hague Conference is here. Related posts:EC Signs Hague Choice of Court Convention On 1st April 2009, the Czech Minister for Justice signed...United States Signs Hague Convention on Choice of Court Agreements On 19th January, the outgoing State Department Legal Advisor, John...
Article on the Dichotomy of Substance and Procedure
Posted on May 02, 2009Martin Illmer has written an article titled: “Neutrality matters - Some Thoughts about the Rome Regulations and the So-Called Dichotomy of Substance and Procedure in European Private International Law” The article is published in Civil Justice Quarterly 28 (2009) 237 et seq...
French Supreme Court Keeps Flashairlines Case in France
Posted on April 30, 2009In a previous post, I had reported how the Paris Court of Appeal had accepted to rule on its jurisdiction and to decline it in order to send back a case to the United States. French victims of a plane crash in Egypt had first sued Boeing and some of its subcontractors in Los Angeles...
ECJ Judgment: Apostolides
Posted on April 29, 2009Yesterday, on 28 April 2009, the ECJ delivered its judgment in case C-420/07 (Meletis Apostolides v. David Charles Orams, Linda Elizabeth Orams). The background of the case is - shortly summarised - as follows: Mr. Apostolides, a Greek Cypriot, owned land in an area which is now under the control of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, [...
On the value of choice of forum and choice of law clauses in Spain
Posted on April 24, 2009A contract was held between two companies: a Spanish company and a foreign one. They agreed to refer any dispute concerning the contract to the courts of Barcelona (Spain), and chose Spanish law as applicable law. Later, the Spanish company decided to sue its counterparty in the United States...
ECJ: Judgments on Brussels I Regulation
Posted on April 23, 2009Today, the ECJ delivered two judgments on the interpretation of the Brussels I Regulation. 1. Falco Privatstiftung and Rabitsch (C-533/07) The first case, which had been referred to the ECJ by the Austrian Oberster Gerichtshof (OGH), concerns the interpretation of Art...
New Book on Rome II
Posted on April 22, 2009Brill / Martinus Nijhoff has recently published The Rome II Regulation on the Law Applicable to Non-Contractual Obligations: A New International Litigation Regime. The book is edited by John Ahern and William Binchy of Trinity College Dublin. Full details of the book are available here...
Commission?s Report and Green Paper on Brussels I Regulation
Posted on April 22, 2009Yesterday, on 21 April 2009, the European Commission adopted a report and a green paper on the functioning of the existing rules on jurisdiction of the courts and the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments (Regulation (EC) No. 44/2001). The background of the Commission’s report and green paper is as follows: Art...
On the Desirability of the Alien Tort Statute
Posted on April 20, 2009Judicially made corporate human rights litigation is a luxury we can no longer afford. This is the conclusion of an op-ed (Rights Case Gone Wrong) published yesterday in the Washington Post by two leading American international law professors, Curtis Bradley (Duke) and Jack Goldsmith (Harvard)...
New publication on Israeli PIL
Posted on April 20, 2009Private International Law in Israel by Prof Talia Einhorn Visiting Professor of Law / Indiana University School of Law Visiting Senior Research Fellow / Tel-Aviv University Faculty of Management Kluwer Law International 2009 396 pages ISBN: 9041128670 ISBN-13: 9789041128676 Israel?s PIL is not codified, nor is it clearly traceable to any one legal system...
Conference: The Future of Transnational Litigation
Posted on April 19, 2009The Future of Transnational Litigation Conference will be taking place in Vienna, Austria on 4-5 June 2009. The organizer is the International Bar Association. Topics will include: The future for international litigation in Europe: revising the Brussels Regulation A role-playing exercise in which an international client, general counsel and lead external counsel consider where to bring suit [...
PIL conference University of Johannesburg: provisional programme
Posted on April 17, 2009COMPARATIVE PRIVATE INTERNATIONAL LAW CONFERENCE 8?11 SEPTEMBER 2009 UNIVERSITY OF JOHANNESBURG TUESDAY 8 SEPTEMBER 2009 WELCOMING ADDRESS Prof P H O?Brien Executive Dean: Faculty of Law University of Johannesburg OPENING ADDRESS Member Executive Leader Group University of Johannesburg KEY-NOTE ADDRESS (I) Reconciling classic private international law with fidelity to constitutional values Prof C F Forsyth University of Cambridge United Kingdom PRIVATE INTERNATIONAL LAW OF [...
CLIP Principles for Conflict of Laws in Intellectual Property: First Preliminary Draft
Posted on April 16, 2009The European Max-Planck Group for Conflict of Laws in Intellectual Property, or simply CLIP, has published the first version of their Principles which are available for download at their web page. The purpose of publishing the First Preliminary Draft is to invite scholars and practitioners outside the Group to make suggestions or advance critical remarks [...
Lawrence Collins Appointed to the House of Lords
Posted on April 11, 2009It does not seem very long ago that we announced the appointment of Sir Lawrence Collins (co-author and General Editor of Dicey Morris and Collins: The Conflict of Laws) to the Court of Appeal; and, in fact, it wasn’t. After two years sitting as a Lord Justice of Appeal, Sir Lawrence has been appointed a [...
Manitoba Law Reform Commission Releases Report on Private International Law
Posted on April 10, 2009The province of Manitoba’s Law Reform Commission has released a report on Private International Law (available here). It considers three central issues: 1. Should legislation be adopted to modify the common law choice of law rule for torts as formulated in Tolofson v...
Journal of Private International Law Conference 2009 at NYU
Posted on April 08, 2009There are just a few places left at the Journal of Private International Law Conference 2009 - to be held at NYU from 16th - 18th April - so (if you wish to attend) I suggest that you book with all due speed. I shall be attempting to ‘live blog’ the conference, alerting readers to the [...
EC Signs Hague Choice of Court Convention
Posted on April 05, 2009On 1st April 2009, the Czech Minister for Justice signed the Convention on behalf of the European Community (see the proposal to do so here). Negotiations on the Convention at the Hague were carried out ostensibly under shared competence between the EC and the Member States, but in the wake of Opinion 1/03, of course, [...
ECJ: Judgment on Brussels II bis (A)
Posted on April 04, 2009On 2 April 2009, the ECJ has delivered its judgment in case C-523/07 (A). The case, which has been referred to the ECJ by the Finnish Korkein hallinto-oikeus, concerns three children who lived originally in Finland with their mother (A) and stepfather...
Canadian National Class Action Judgment Not Recognized in Quebec
Posted on April 03, 2009The Supreme Court of Canada has confirmed the decision of the Quebec Court of Appeal in Canada Post Corp. v. Lepine (available here). The decision flows from Canada Post’s termination, after only a year, of a lifetime internet service it sold to customers...
ECJ Judgment in Gambazzi
Posted on April 02, 2009The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has delivered today its judgment in Gambazzi v. Daimler Chrysler Canada, Inc. and CIBC Mellon Trust Company. The case, previously known as Stolzenberg, had been already litigated in numerous jurisdictions (see our previous posts here and here)...
PIL conference at the University of Johannesburg
Posted on April 02, 2009Comparative private international law conference University of Johannesburg 8-11 September 2009 Key-note speakers: (1) Prof Dr C F Forsyth (University of Cambridge): Reconciling classic private international law with fidelity to constitutional values (2) Prof Dr M Martinek (University of Saarland): The Rome I and Rome II regulations in European private international law ? a critical analysis 34 participants from 17 countries: Cameroon (1) Canada (1) China (4) Croatia [...
Forum Non Conveniens and Treaty Rights: King v. Cessna
Posted on April 02, 2009On Monday, the Eleventh Circuit rendered an interesting opinion in the case of King v. Cessna Aircraft . The case concerned several interesting points on the doctrine offorum non conveniens, the most interesting of which is the competing rights guaranteed to foreign plaintiffs under bilateral treaties...
BIICL Fellowship in Private International Law
Posted on April 01, 2009The British Institute of International and Comparative Law is seeking to appoint a Senior Research Fellow in International Private Law. The advertisement can be found here and a full job description can be found here. The post is a research post, with no teaching duties...
Yearbook of Private International Law, vol. X (2008)
Posted on March 27, 2009I am grateful to Gian Paolo Romano, Production Editor of the Yearbook of Private International Law, for providing this presentation of the new volume of the YPIL. Volume X (2008) of the Yearbook of Private International Law, edited by Prof. Andrea Bonomi and Prof...
European Parliament: Resolution on Cooperation in the Taking of Evidence in Civil or Commercial Matters
Posted on March 26, 2009The European Parliament’s Resolution of 10 March 2009 on cooperation between the courts of the Member States in the taking of evidence in civil or commercial matters (2008/2180(INI)) has been published (see the Parliament’s website). The resolution constitutes the Parliament’s response to the Commission’s report on the application of the Council Regulation (EC) No 1206/2001 of [...
Swiss Institute of Comparative Law: First Book on the Rome I Regulation in French
Posted on March 25, 2009The contributions presented at the 20th Journée de droit international privé, jointly organised in March 2008 in Lausanne by the Swiss Institute of Comparative Law (ISDC) and the Centre de droit comparé, européen et international (CDCEI) of the Law Faculty of University of Lausanne and dedicated to the Rome I Regulation, have been published by [...
Articles on Rome II and Hague Convention on Choice of Court Agreements
Posted on March 24, 2009The current issue (Vol. 73, No. 1, January 2009) of the Rabels Zeitschrift contains inter alia two interesting articles on the Rome II Regulation and the Hague Convention on Choice of Court Agreements: Thomas Kadner Graziano: “The Law Applicable to Non-Contractual Obligations (Rome II Regulation)” - the English abstract reads as follows: As of 11 January 2009, [...
Tokyo International Symposium: ?Intellectual Property and International Civil Litigation?
Posted on March 23, 2009The Copyright Group, the Industrial Property Right Group, and International Civil Procedure Group all working within the ?Transparency of Japanese Law? Project are jointly organising the international symposium on the ever more challenging issues arising in the field where private international law meets intellectual property law...
A new Spanish Magazine: Cuadernos de Derecho Transnacional
Posted on March 23, 2009On March 16, 2009 the first issue of a new legal journal dedicated to Private International Law has seen the light. “Cuadernos de Derecho Transnacional?(CDT) (?TransnationalLaw Review?) is published by the Private International Law Section of the University Carlos III of Madrid, Spain...
Webcast of the 2008 Venice Conference on the Rome I Regulation
Posted on March 22, 2009We pointed out in a previous post the programme of the conference on the Rome I reg. hosted by the University of Venice “Ca’ Foscari” on 28 November 2008: “La nuova disciplina comunitaria della legge applicabile alle obbligazioni contrattuali” (The new EC regime on the law applicable to contractual obligations)...
Discovery in Aid of Litigation Post-?Intel?: The Continuing Split
Posted on March 20, 2009Law.com just posted a good article on the follow-on litigation after the Supreme Court’s decision in Intel Corp. v. Advanced Micro Systems, Inc., 542 U.S. 241 (2004). That decision, in short, held that 28 U.S.C. 1782–which empowers federal district courts to compel discovery “for use in a proceeding in a foreign or international tribunal”–could [...
International Custody Case between the U.S. and Brazil
Posted on March 20, 2009See this post of Solangel Maldonado @ Concurring Opinions : Some of my family law students have been following the international custody case involving Brazil and the United States. According to David Goldman, a New Jersey resident, in June 2004, his wife took their four year-old son, Sean, to Brazil on vacation where he was [...
Preemptive Jurisdiction Trumps Forum Non Conveniens in Panama
Posted on March 19, 2009I am grateful to Henry Saint Dahl, the President of the Inter-American Bar Foundation, for contributing this report. On March 17, 2009, the First Superior Court of the First Judicial District of Panama affirmed a ruling for lack of jurisdiction in Sara Grant Tobal et al v...
Publication: Bariatti, ?Casi e materiali di diritto internazionale privato comunitario?
Posted on March 18, 2009The Italian publishing house Giuffré has recently published the second edition of a very rich reference book on EC Private International Law, authored by Prof. Stefania Bariatti (University of Milan): “Casi e materiali di diritto internazionale privato comunitario“...
Harris: ?The Proposed EU Regulation on Succession and Wills: Prospects and Challenges?
Posted on March 17, 2009As has already been noted on this site, the European Commission will present its proposed Regulation on Succession and Wills on 24th March 2009. In anticipation of that announcement, Professor Jonathan Harris (who has been advising the UK Ministry of Justice throughout the process) has written a lengthy article on the proposed Regulation: “The Proposed [...
Colloquium on Choice of Law Clauses
Posted on March 15, 2009On 10 June 2009, the Institute for Civil and Business Law (Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration) will host together with the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Insitute for European Tort Law and the University of Vienna a colloquium on the limits and chances of choice of law clauses: “Rechtswahl - Grenzen und Chancen“...
Spanish Homosexual Couple and Surrogate Pregnancy (II)
Posted on March 14, 2009In a previous post (http://conflictoflaws.net/2008/spanish-homosexual-couple-and-surrogate-pregnancy/) I related how a certificate issued in the U.S.A., establishing the parenthood of a baby born in this country to a surrogate mother, had been denied registration in Spain...
Latest Issue of ?Praxis des Internationalen Privat- und Verfahrensrechts? (2/2009)
Posted on March 14, 2009Recently, the March/April issue of the German legal journal ?Praxis des Internationalen Privat- und Verfahrensrechts? (IPRax) was released. It contains the following articles/case notes (including the reviewed decisions): Robert Freitag: “Die kollisionsrechtliche Behandlung ausländischer Eingriffsnormen nach Art...
AG Opinion on Brussels II bis (?Hadadi?)
Posted on March 13, 2009Yesterday, Advocate General Kokott delivered her opinion in case C-168/08 (Hadadi). The case concerns the interpretation of the Brussels II bis Regulation and raises the question whether a Hungarian or a French court has jurisdiction over a divorce decree where both spouses are habitually resident in France and have both Hungarian and French nationality...
Related Actions and Jurisdiction Clauses
Posted on March 12, 2009On 19 June 2008, the Supreme Court of Luxembourg for private and criminal matters (Cour de cassation) delivered a judgment in an interesting case involving related actions and a jurisdiction clause. The related actions were pending before Belgian and Luxembourg courts...
Conference on European Tort Law
Posted on March 11, 2009The European Centre of Tort and Insurance Law will host its annual Conference on European Tort Law in Vienna from 16th-18th April. Detailed information on the programme, registration and accomodation can be found on their specially-designed website and on the following information folder...
Interesting New Book: The Law Market, by Professors Erin O?Hara and Larry E. Ribstein
Posted on March 10, 2009I just caught wind of an interesting new read from Oxford University Press. Here’s the quick summary on their website: Today, a California resident can incorporate her shipping business in Delaware, register her ships in Panama, hire her employees from Hong Kong, place her earnings in an asset-protection trust formed in the Cayman Islands, and [...
Conference: ?Le nuove competenze comunitarie dello spazio giudiziario europeo: obbligazioni alimentari e successioni?
Posted on March 09, 2009The Faculty of Law and the European Documentation Centre of the University of Verona will host on 20 March 2009 (14:30 h) a conference on maintenance obligations and successions: “Le nuove competenze comunitarie dello spazio giudiziario europeo: obbligazioni alimentari e successioni“ (New EC Competences in the European Judicial Area: Maintenance Obligations and Successions)...
AG opinion on Roda Golf (Regulation Nº 1348/00)
Posted on March 08, 2009On October 2007, a company named Roda Golf & Beach Resort S.L. (?Roda Golf?), executed before a notary an instrument of notification and request, seeking the service of 16 letters giving notice of the termination of a contract on addressees residing in the United Kingdom...
European Commission?s Proposal on Succession and Wills to Be Presented Shortly
Posted on March 07, 2009According to the January 2009 issue of Brussels News, the information bulletin of the Brussels Office of the Bar Council, the European Commission will present its Proposal for a regulation on PIL aspects of succession and wills on 24 March 2009: Wills and Succession The Commission’s long-awaited private international law proposal is due out on 24 March...
Two Cases on Internet Jurisdiction
Posted on February 26, 2009Court Upholds Forum Selection Clause in Web Hosting Agreement Jenny Kim (Stanford Law School) has, on the CIS-website, posted a case review of decision 2008 WL 4951020 (N.D. Cal. November 18, 2008) where the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California dismissed Bennett v...
Fourth Issue of 2008?s Revue Critique de Droit International Privé
Posted on February 24, 2009The fourth issue of the Revue Critique de Droit International Privé was just released. It contains two articles. Unfortunately, none of them comes with an abstract in English. The first is a presentation of the Rome I Regulation by emeritus Professor Paul Lagarde and Aline Tenenbaum, who lectures at the Faculty of Law of Paris XII University...
An Early 2009 Round-Up: Significant Federal Cases Over the Past Two Months
Posted on February 24, 2009In this round-up of significant U.S. decisions during the first two months of 2009, we?ll focus on two areas of law that generate a lot of jurisprudence at the appellate level. A. Jurisdiction for Acts Occurring Abroad Two federal statutory schemes?the first a response to the events of September 11, the second a 200 year old response [...
Supreme Court of Canada Addresses Role of Parallel Proceedings in Stay Applications
Posted on February 23, 2009Canada’s highest court has delivered its judgment in Teck Cominco Metals Ltd. v. Lloyd’s Underwriters (available here). The decision is quite brief and upholds the decision of both courts below, leaving some to wonder why leave to appeal was granted...
Garsec goes to the High Court
Posted on February 23, 2009Readers may recall the interesting forum non conveniens case in the New South Wales Court of Appeal, Garsec Pty Ltd v His Majesty The Sultan of Brunei [2008] NSWCA 211; (2008) 250 ALR 682. My post on that decision is here. It arises out of an alleged contract for the sale of an old, rare [...
Publication: Liber Fausto Pocar - New Instruments of Private International Law
Posted on February 22, 2009The Italian publishing house Giuffrè has recently published a very rich collection of essays in honor of Fausto Pocar, Professor at the University of Milan and judge and former President of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, one of Italian leading scholars in the field of public international law, EU law and private [...
Retaliation in Alien Tort Statute Litigation?
Posted on February 22, 2009Chevron is seeking to recover legal costs, including $ 190,000 in copying expenses, from Nigerian villagers Related posts:Transnational Tort Litigation as a Trade and Investment Issue Alan O. Sykes (Stanford Law School) has posted “Transnational Tort...
Jurisdiction in Contract Matters in Brazil
Posted on February 21, 2009I am grateful to Henry Saint Dahl, the President of the Inter-American Bar Foundation, for contributing this report. São Paulo Civil Appellate Court, Seventh Chamber (Appeal N0. 312.848-4/4-00): Editoriale Johnson SPA et al.; v. Renaço Comércio e Importação e Indústria Ltda et al...
Programme and Booking for the Journal of Private International Law Conference 2009 at NYU
Posted on February 20, 2009The programme for the Journal of Private International Law Conference 2009, to be held at New York University Law School on 17-18 April 2009, along with a special tribute to Andreas Lowenfeld on 16 April, is now available. The line-up, both in the early careers section, and in the plenary sessions, makes this a diverse [...
First Issue of 2009?s Journal du Droit International
Posted on February 19, 2009The first issue of French Journal du Droit International (also known as Clunet) will shortly be released. It contains several articles dealing with conflict issues. The topic of the first two is the 2008 Rome I Regulation on the law governing contractual obligations...
10th Anniversary of the Yearbook of Private International Law
Posted on February 19, 2009For the 10th Anniversary of the Yearbook of Private International Law, a conference will be held in Lausanne, Switzerland, on 19 March 2009 at the Swiss Institute of Comparative Law. The topic of the day will be “The Future of PIL between National and International Codifications and Case Law”...
ECJ Judgement on Deko-Marty Belgium, Case C-330/07
Posted on February 18, 2009Many thanks to Professor Laura Carballo (Santiago de Compostela University, Spain), who has asked me to upload this brief comment on the ECJ judgment following Veronika Gaertner’s post ECJ: Judgment on International Jurisdiction in Respect of Actions to set a Transaction aside by Virtue of Insolvency...
PIL conference in Johannesburg
Posted on February 18, 2009PIL conference at the University of Johannesburg 9-11 September 2009 Call for papers: www.uj.ac.za/law Closing date: 28 February 2009 Related posts:PIL conference in Johannesburg Please find a call for papers for the third quadrennial...Seminar on PIL at the University of Johannesburg FACULTY OF LAW, UNIVERSITY OF JOHANNESBURG - INSTITUTE FOR PRIVATE...
ECJ: Judgment on International Jurisdiction in Respect of Actions to set a Transaction aside by Virtue of Insolvency
Posted on February 17, 2009On 12th February, the ECJ delivered its judgment in case C-339/07 (Christopher Seagon in his capacity as liquidator in respect of the assets of Frick Teppichboden Supermärkte GmbH v Deko Marty Belgium N.V.). The questions referred to the ECJ concern the international jurisdiction of courts in respect of actions to set a transaction aside by [...
Service of Federal Court documents outside Australia
Posted on February 16, 2009Practitioners in Australia should be aware that, pursuant to Practice Note No 13 (4 September 2008), the Federal Court requires a party applying for leave to serve originating process or other documents outside Australia to support the application with evidence of information obtained from the Private International Law Section of the Commonwealth Attorney-General’s Department in [...
BIICL Conference: Finality in International Litigation and Arbitration: Res Judicata in National, European and International Law
Posted on February 15, 2009As part of the BIICL?s 2009 Seminar Series on Private International Law the BIICL organizes in February 2009 (date to be set) a conference titled ?Finality in International Litigation and Arbitration: Res Judicata in National, European and International Law?...
Layton on West Tankers
Posted on February 13, 2009Alexander Layton QC is a barrister in practice at 20 Essex Street, London. He is a specialist in private international law and arbitration, and joint general editor of European Civil Practice. Although he acted for the UK government at the oral hearing in West Tankers, the views below are purely personal...
Rafael Arenas on West Tankers
Posted on February 13, 2009Rafael Arenas is Professor of Private International Law at the University of Barcelona (Universidad Autónoma). He has numerous publications in the field of international commercial law. He is author of several monograph works, such as Registro Mercantil y Derecho del Comercio Internacional, and co-author of Derecho de los negocios internacionales Regulation 44/2001 also applies to arbitral proceedings The [...
Pfeiffer on West Tankers
Posted on February 12, 2009Thomas Pfeiffer is professor of law and director of the Institute for Comparative Law, Conflict of Laws and International Business Law of Heidelberg University. He has published intensively in the areas of contract law, private international law and international dispute resolution...
Harris on West Tankers
Posted on February 12, 2009(Jonathan Harris is the Professor of International Commercial Law at the University of Birmingham, and a barrister at Brick Court Chambers. He is one of the authors of Dicey, Morris & Collins: The Conflict of Laws, and is co-editor of the Journal of Private International Law...
Kessedjian on West Tankers
Posted on February 12, 2009Catherine Kessedjian is Professor of Law at the European College of Paris (University Paris 2) and a former Deputy Secretary General of the Hague Conference on Private International Law. Commenting ?à chaud? is contrary to the good lawyer?s tradition (at least in civil law)...
Dickinson on West Tankers: Another One Bites the Dust
Posted on February 11, 2009Andrew Dickinson is a Solicitor Advocate, Consultant to Clifford Chance LLP and Visiting Fellow in Private International Law at the British Institute of International & Comparative Law. His commentary on the Rome II Regulation is published by Oxford University Press...
West Tankers: Online Symposium
Posted on February 10, 2009The European Court of Justice has delivered its judgment in the West Tankers case. This decision was much awaited. It raises critical issues, in particular in respect of the actual scope of European civil procedure, the consequences of the principle of mutual trust and the tolerance of the European Union with regard common law procedural devices...
ECJ Judgment in West Tankers
Posted on February 10, 2009The European Court of Justice delivered its judgment in West Tankers this morning (we had previously reported on the conclusions of Advocate General Kokott in this case). The issue before the court was, in the words of the court, 19. … essentially, whether it is incompatible with Regulation No 44/2001 for a court of a Member State to [...
III International Seminar on Private International Law
Posted on February 10, 2009The III International Seminar on Private International Law, coordinated by Professors José Carlos Fernández Rozas and Pedro de Miguel Asensio, took place at the Faculty of Law, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, on the 5th and 6th February. The Seminar, entitled ?Self-regulation and unification of international contract law?, was divided into five sessions dedicated to offering a [...
West Tankers: Comment by Professor Hess
Posted on February 10, 2009We are grateful to Professor Burkhard Hess, University of Heidelberg, for contributing the following remarks on the ECJ’s judgment in “West Tankers”: 1. The outcome of the ECJ?s judgment is not surprising and, from the point of view of continental procedural law, the findings are completely in line with the framework of [...
Verona Conference on the Rome I Regulation
Posted on February 07, 2009The Faculty of Law at Verona are hosting a conference on the Rome I Regulation on 19-20 March 2009. The conference flyer describes its scope thusly: Since it is believed that the proper functioning of the internal market creates a need, in order to improve the predictability of the outcome of litigation, certainty as to the [...
Volume 4, Issue 3, Journal of Private International Law
Posted on February 07, 2009The latest issue of the Journal of Private International Law is out, and the contents are: Understanding the English Response to the Europeanisation of Private International Law by Jonathan Harris Licences and Assignments of Intellectual Property Rights Under the Rome I Regulation by Paul LC Torremans Matrimonial Property on Divorce: All Change in Europe by CMV Clarkson A Defence of the [...
Respect for Algerian/Moroccan Children?s Origin
Posted on February 06, 2009I am grateful to Horatia Muir Watt to have accepted to react to my post on Adoption of Algerian/Moroccan Children in France. I certainly agree with Gilles Cuniberti that the prohibition resulting from article 370-3 of the Civil Code certainly lacks nuance...
No Adoption in France for Algerian/Moroccan Children
Posted on February 06, 2009Children from Algeria or Morocco may not be adopted in France. This is because under French law, the law of the child controls the issue of whether adoption is possible at all. Thus, children from countries where adoption is unknown are unadoptable. As there is no adoption in Islam, children from countries such as Algeria and [...
Uruguay - Case on Carrier?s Liability
Posted on February 05, 2009I am grateful to Henry Saint Dahl, the President of the Inter-American Bar Foundation, for contributing this report on this case from Uruguay. On October 10, 2008, the Civil Court of Appeals in Montevideo, Uruguay, affirmed the decision of the 14th Civil Court of Montevideo in Royal & Sun Alliance Seguros Uruguay Sociedad Anónima v...
Reference from Irish Supreme Court to ECJ: Same Proceedings Pending in a non European State
Posted on February 04, 2009I am grateful to Michelle Smith de Bruin BL for preparing the following report on a recent reference from the Irish Supreme Court to the European Court of Justice. On 30 January 2009, the Irish Supreme Court decided in Goshawk Dedicated Limited and Kite Dedicated Limited formerly known as Goshawk Dedicated (No...
Consumer Protection: Directive 2008/122/EC
Posted on February 03, 2009A Directive on the protection of consumers in respect of certain aspects of timeshare, long-term holiday product, resale and exchange contracts, repealling Directive 94/47/EC, has been published today (OJ, L, nº 33). The new Directive aims to update Directive 94/47/EC, covering new holiday products similar to timeshare that did not exist in 1994, and also [...
Rome I: Commission Decision on the UK?s Opt-In Published in the OJ - Response to the UK Government?s Consultation
Posted on February 01, 2009Following the publication in the OJ (no. L 10 of 15 January 2009, p. 22) of the formal Commission Decision of 22 December 2008 on the request from the United Kingdom to accept the Rome I reg. (see our previous post on the Commission opinion), the UK government has published the response to the public [...
Article: ?Extra-territorial Application of Antitrust ? The Case of a Small Economy (Israel)?
Posted on January 30, 2009Michal Gal (University of Haifa, NYU School of Law) has on the NELLCO Legal Scholarship Repository posted a paper titled “Extra-territorial Application of Antitrust ? The Case of a Small Economy (Israel)”, which also analyses legal aspects of private international law...
AG Opinion on Brussels II bis Regulation
Posted on January 30, 2009Yesterday, Advocate General Kokott delivered her opinion in case C-523/07 (Applicant A). The case, which has been referred to the ECJ by the Finnish Korkein hallinto-oikeus, concerns three children who lived originally in Finland with their mother (A) and stepfather...
Special Issue Rome II Nederlands Internationaal Privaatrecht
Posted on January 29, 2009The latest issue of the Dutch PIL journal Nederlands Internationaal Privaatrecht (2008, no. 4 - published in December) is dedicated to the Rome II Regulation. It includes the following eleven contributions: M. Wilderspin, The Rome II Regulation; Some policy observations, p...
AG Opinion on the Interpretation of Art. 5 (1) Brussels I Regulation
Posted on January 28, 2009Yesterday, Advocate General Trstenjak`s opinion in case C-533/07 (Falco Privatstiftung und Rabitsch) was published. This case is of particular interest since it concerns the interpretation of the notion of “services” (Art. 5 (1) (b) second indent Regulation (EC) Nr...
Abbott v. Abbott: An Update
Posted on January 26, 2009As previously mentioned on this site, the case of Abbott v. Abbott continues to look like the U.S. Supreme Court’s first attempt to clarify the operation of the Hague Abduction Convention. Last week, the Court invited the views of the new Solicitor General on whether the case should be accepted...
Publication: ?Studi in onore di Vincenzo Starace?
Posted on January 26, 2009The Italian publisher Editoriale Scientifica (Naples) has recently published a very rich collection of essays in honor of Vincenzo Starace, late Professor in the University of Bari, one of Italian leading academics in the field of Public International Law and Private International Law, who passed away in 2006...
ERA Conference: Complete agenda spring and summer 2009
Posted on January 24, 2009ERA Conference: Complete agenda spring and summer 2009 In our previous posts we have informed about the ERA conferences for the spring 2009 titled ?Annual Conference on European Insurance Law 2009? and ? Cross-Border insolvency proceedings?. Here are the rest of the conferences for the spring and summer 2009: Successions and Wills in a European context, Prague, 20-21 [...
PIL conference in Johannesburg
Posted on January 21, 2009Please find a call for papers for the third quadrennial international conference on comparative private international law to be held at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa (9-11 September 2009) on www.uj.ac.za/law. Confirmed speakers include Prof C F Forsyth (University of Cambridge) and Prof M M Martinek (University of Saarland)...
United States Signs Hague Convention on Choice of Court Agreements
Posted on January 21, 2009On 19th January, the outgoing State Department Legal Advisor, John Bellinger, signed the Hague Convention (of 30 June 2005) on Choice of Court Agreements on behalf of the United States of America. The USA is the first country to sign the Convention, with Mexico also a party to the Convention through accession...
In Memoriam: Professor Jan Kropholler
Posted on January 21, 2009Professor Jan Kropholler, one of the most renowned German scholars in private international law, has passed away last week. Only recently Professor Kropholler celebrated his 70th birthday. On this occasion, as we have reported, a Festschrift in his honour was published by Mohr Siebeck titled ?Die richtige Ordnung? (The Right Order) and presented to him [...
Foreign Law before the Spanish Courts: the Need for a Reform
Posted on January 20, 2009In a previous post (under the title Spanish International Adoption Act, Law 54/2007, of December 28) I stated that, with the exception of the International Adoption Act of 2007, there is no Private International Law Act in Spain. For some years, under the direction of Professor Julio Gonzalez Campos, Spanish academics (almost all of us: [...
ERA Conference: Cross-Border insolvency proceedings
Posted on January 20, 2009On 26-27 March 2009 a conference on Cross-Border insolvency proceedings will be held at the Academy of European Law in Trier. The abstract reads: When the assets belonging to an insolvent debtor are situated in different EU Member States, crossborder insolvency will often give rise to conflicts that need to be resolved by applying Regulation (EC) [...
Choice of Law in the American Courts in 2008
Posted on January 19, 2009Symeon Symeonides has posted the twenty-second instalment of his annual survey on US choice of law decisions on SSRN. Here’s the abstract: This is the Twenty-Second Annual Survey of American Choice-of-Law Cases. It covers cases decided by American state and federal courts from January 1 to December 31, 2008, and reported during the same period...
ERA Conference: Annual Conference on European Insurance Law 2009
Posted on January 19, 2009The ERA website informs: On 23 and 24 March 2009 the Annual Conference on European Insurance Law 2009 will be held in Trier at the Academy of European Law. The objective of this conference is to update practitioners on the most recent developments in the field of insurance law pursuant to legislation and jurisprudence...
The Amir of Qatar, a yacht built in New Zealand and sailed to Australia, and the Australian Federal Court
Posted on January 19, 2009In Thor Shipping A/S v The Ship “Al Duhail” [2008] FCA 1842 (5 December 2008) the Australian Federal Court considered damages proceedings in its admiralty jurisdiction against the Ship Al Duhail. The proceedings were brought by the owner of a cargo vessel, Thor Shipping, which had been chartered to carry the Al Duhail from New [...
Assistant in Private International Law in Luxembourg
Posted on January 18, 2009The Faculty of Law of the University of Luxembourg is seeking to recruit an Assistant (PhD student) in Private International Law, Comparative Law or Civil Law. This is a distinct position from the one I reported on earlier. The candidate should be a PhD student who will be expected to work on his doctorate, to teach [...
Latest Issue of ?Praxis des Internationalen Privat- und Verfahrensrechts? (1/2009)
Posted on January 14, 2009Recently, the January/February issue of the German legal journal ?Praxis des Internationalen Privat- und Verfahrensrechts? (IPRax) was released. It contains the following articles/case notes (including the reviewed decisions): H.-P. Mansel/K. Thorn/R...
Jurisdiction to Enjoin a Foreign Website in the EU
Posted on January 13, 2009Which court has jurisdiction to enjoin a foreign based website to carry on illegal activities in the forum? On November 6, 2008, the French Supreme Court for private and criminal matters (Cour de cassation) held that French courts had jurisdiction to enjoin a company incorporated in Malta from carrying on illicit activities through a website, as the site [...
Rome II Regulation Applicable in EU
Posted on January 11, 2009Starting from today, 11 January 2009, Regulation no. 864/2007 on the law applicable to non-contractual obligations (Rome II) is applicable in the Member States (see its Art. 32), excepting Denmark. In the comments to one of our previous posts, some debate was raised as to the proper construction of Art...
Maintenance Regulation Published in the OJ
Posted on January 10, 2009The maintenance regulation, and its 11 Annexes, have been published in the Official Journal of the European Union no. L 7 of 10 January 2009. The official reference is the following: Council Regulation (EC) No 4/2009 of 18 December 2008 on jurisdiction, applicable law, recognition and enforcement of decisions and cooperation in matters relating to [...
Conferences at MPI for Private Law, Hamburg
Posted on January 10, 2009Private Law in Eastern Europe ? Autonomous Developments or Legal Transplants? The MPI website informs: On 27 and 28 March 2009 a conference will be held at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law on the topic “Private Law in Eastern Europe ? Autonomous Developments or Legal Transplants?”...
ABA practitioner survey on the functioning of the Hague Evidence and the Hague Service Conventions
Posted on January 08, 2009In connection with the February 2009 Hague Conference on Private International Law meeting that will consider the practical operation of a number of Hague Conventions, the US State Department has asked the International Litigation Committees of the International and Litigation sections of the ABA to survey its members in order to get practitioner input about [...
American Surrogacy and Parenthood in France: Update
Posted on January 07, 2009In earlier posts, I had reported how the Paris Court of Appeal had accepted to recognize Californian birth certificates after a French couple had resorted to surrogacy in San Diego. Surrogacy is illegal in France. An appeal was lodged before the French Supreme Court for private and criminal matters (Cour de cassation)...
Conference: Hague Conference on Private International Law
Posted on January 07, 2009A Special Commission on the practical operation of the Hague Apostille, Service, Taking of Evidence and Access to Justice Conventions will be held in The Hague from 2-12 February 2009. The meeting is open ONLY to experts designated by the Members of the Hague Conference, invited non-Member States and International Organisations that have been granted [...
New Release of DeCITA, the leading Latin American Legal Review on Private International Law and International Trade Law
Posted on January 07, 2009DeCITA (Derecho del Comercio Internacional - Temas y Actualidades) (semi-annual publication in spanish, english, portugese or french) has released its 9th issue. As usual it covers topics concerning not only Latin American Private International Law but also European and North American Law...
Australian difficulties for ?service of suit? clauses in insurance contracts
Posted on January 06, 2009AIG UK Ltd v QBE Insurance (Europe) Ltd [2008] QSC 308 (28 November 2008) reveals some of the difficulties that can be created for insurers and reinsurers of Australian liabilities by the form of “service of suit” clauses often found in Lloyds and other non-Australian insurance contracts...
Forum non conveniens, anti-suit injunctions, and concurrent US and Australian copyright proceedings
Posted on January 06, 2009In TS Production LLC v Drew Pictures Pty Ltd [2008] FCAFC 194 (19 December 2008), the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia considered difficult issues concerning forum non conveniens and anti-suit injunctions in the context of concurrent US and Australian copyright proceedings...
Hague Abduction Convention Before the U.S. Supreme Court: Abbott v. Abbott
Posted on January 05, 2009On this blog, we have long noted the splits of authority among U.S. courts regarding the operation of the Hague Abduction Convention. (See here, and here.)A new cert petition in the United States Supreme Court brings one of these disagreements to the forefront...
A Network for Legislative Cooperation
Posted on December 29, 2008A Resolution of the Council and of the Representatives of the Governments of the Member States, on the establishment of a Network for legislative cooperation between the Ministries of Justice of the European Union has been published in OJ C 326, 20.12...
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Posted on December 24, 2008From everyone at Conflict of Laws .net, we wish you a very Merry Christmas (or Happy Holiday, as the case may be), and an excellent New Year. Just in case you’re not yet in the festive spirit, here’s White Christmas, as sung by The Drifters, performed by Santa and his reindeers: [Click on the title above to view the full item on Conflict of Laws ...
State Immunity: Germany Institutes Proceedings Against Italy Before the ICJ
Posted on December 24, 2008The “legal saga” that involved in recent years the Federal Republic of Germany, brought before Italian courts in a number of judicial cases regarding civil claims for atrocities committed during WWII (see our previous post here, and the ones on similar issues in other countries by Marta Requejo Isidro and Gilles Cuniberti), has finally found its [...
Gambazzi v. Daimler Chrysler, Part 10: Monte Carlo
Posted on December 21, 2008And then there were ten! The Soltzenberg - Gambazzi case had already been litigated in nine jurisdictions, including the two European courts. A major jurisdiction of the western world was still missing, but it is not anymore: Daimler Chrylser Canada and CIBC Mellon Trust have also sought enforcement of the English default judgments in Monte Carlo...
ECJ: AG Opinion in ?Apostolides?
Posted on December 20, 2008On Thursday, the Opinion of Advocate General Kokott in case C-420/07 (Meletis Apostolides v. David Charles Orams and Linda Elizabeth Orams) has been published. I. Background of the Case The background of the case was as follows: Mr. Apostolides, a Greek Cypriot, owned land in an area which is now under the control of the Turkish [...
AG Opinion in Gambazzi
Posted on December 18, 2008Advocate General Kokott has delivered her opinion today in Gambazzi v. Daimler Chrysler (Case C 394/07). For the time being, it is not available in English, but is in a few other languages. I reported earlier on this judicial odyssey which has already been litigated in (at least) nine jurisdictions...
ECJ Judgment in Cartesio
Posted on December 17, 2008The much awaited judgment of the European Court of Justice in Cartesio was delivered yesterday. In this case (C-210/06), the ECJ discussed whether Articles 43 EC and 48 EC are to be interpreted as precluding legislation of a Member State under which a company incorporated under the law of that Member State may not transfer its seat to another [...
Irish Case on Hague Convention on Child Abduction
Posted on December 16, 2008I am grateful to Michelle Smith de Bruin BL for preparing the following report on a recent Irish case on the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. In a case (N. v N.: High Court, December 3rd, 2008) brought under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, Mrs Justice [...
First Electronic Apostille in Europe
Posted on December 12, 2008The report of the Hague Conference on Private International Law is here. [Click on the title above to view the full item on Conflict of Laws .net]
Fourth Issue of 2008?s Journal du Droit International
Posted on December 09, 2008The fourth issue of French Journal du Droit International (also known as Clunet) will shortly be released. It contains three articles dealing with conflict issues. The first is authored by Mathias Audit, a professor of Private International Law at the University of Cergy Pontoise...
Enforcement in Netherlands of German ex parte decision under Brussels Regulation
Posted on December 07, 2008In a case between Realchemie Nederland BV (The Netherlands) and Fa. Feinchemie Schwebda GmbH (Germany) the Dutch Supreme Court ruled that a German ?Kostenfestsetzungsbeschluss? (decision on the costs of the procedure), based on an ?einstweilige Verfügung? (provisional measure) was to be recognized and enforced pursuant to the Brussels Regulation (Hoge Raad, 7 November 2008, No...
Publication: Dickinson on the Rome II Regulation
Posted on December 06, 2008On 18th December 2008, Oxford University Press will publish Andrew Dickinson’s new work on The Rome II Regulation - The Law Applicable to Non-Contractual Obligations. Here’s the blurb: Regulation (EC) No 864/2007 on the law applicable to non-contractual obligations (the so-called “Rome II Regulation”) is the product of almost 40-years work by the institutions and Member [...
Exception to the Arbitration Exception: the 1896/2006 Regulation
Posted on December 04, 2008It is hardly necessary to remind readers of this blog that the Brussels I Regulation contains an Arbitration Exception. It is pretty difficult not have heard of, or read about, the West Tankers litigation lately. Of course, the Arbitration Exception is not peculiar to the Brussels I Regulation...
Enforceability of a Judgment and State Immunity: a Recent Decision of the Italian Court of Cassation
Posted on December 02, 2008Following the post by Marta Requejo Isidro on jurisdiction over civil claims against States for violation of basic human rights, and the related comments, we would like to report an interesting decision recently handed down by the United Divisions (?Sezioni Unite?) of the Italian Corte di Cassazione, on the declaration of enforceability against a foreign [...
Sovereign Immunity of Germany for WWII Actions: France
Posted on December 02, 2008After the recent case of the Italian Corte di Cassazione, we thought that some of the readers might be interested by the decision of the French Cour de cassation of 2 June 2004. In this case, proceedings had also been initiated against Germany for actions which had taken place during World War II...
Weighing Disputed Facts in Forum Non Conveniens Motions
Posted on December 01, 2008The Court of Appeal for Ontario has released its decision in Young v. Tyco International of Canada Ltd. (available here). Those interested in the common law doctrine of forum non conveniens might find aspects of the decision of interest. First, Justice Laskin states at para...
Spanish homosexual couple and surrogate pregnancy
Posted on November 29, 2008While some countries, like the U.S.A., accept surrogate pregnancy among permitted techniques of assisted reproduction, Spanish law considers it illegal. That is why a certificate issued in the U.S.A. establishing the parenthood of a baby born in this country to a surrogate mother would not be registered in Spain; accordingly the baby would not have [...
Cross-Border Consumer Disputes in Victoria
Posted on November 27, 2008In light of Martin’s post about Jonathan Hill’s new book on Cross-Border Consumer Contracts, it’s worth noting a recent decision of the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (the main forum for small claims and consumer disputes in Victoria) that VCAT does not have jurisdiction over foreign persons or companies because the VCAT Act does not permit service outside the jurisdiction: Apollo [...
UK Regulations Implementing Rome II Regulation Adopted
Posted on November 26, 2008As pointed out by Andrew Dickinson on the BIICL-PRIVATEINTLAW list (the mailing list promoted by the British Institute of International and Comparative Law, devoted to conflict matters), on 18 November 2008 were laid before the UK Parliament the Regulations implementing the EC Rome II Regulation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland (the Scottish Parliament is [...
Article on choice of law for intra-Australian torts after the civil liability legislation
Posted on November 26, 2008Professor Martin Davies, co-author of the leading text on Australian private international law (Nygh and Davies, Conflict of Laws in Australia, now in its 7th edition (2002)), has an article in the most recent Torts Law Journal. It concerns the choice of law issues which have been created by the various Acts passed by the [...
Propositions of EGPIL on the Extension of Brussels I to Relations with Third States
Posted on November 25, 2008The report of the 18th meeting of the European Group for Private International Law, which was held in Bergen in September 2008, is now available in French on the site of the EGPIL. The Group makes several propositions regarding a possible extension of the Brussels I Regulation to relations with third states...
Conference on punitive damages at Vienna
Posted on November 20, 2008A Conference on Punitive Damages, organised by the Institute for European Tort Law, was held last Monday in Vienna. Aiming to study the nature, role and suitability of punitive damages in tort law and private law in general, this one-day conference got together a panel of scholars and practitioners from different countries: some where punitive [...
Enforcement of Foreign Judgments in Australia
Posted on November 20, 2008A recent judgment of the Supreme Court of Victoria provides a useful short summary of the operation of the Foreign Judgments Act 1991 (Cth) and the circumstances in which registration of a foreign judgment can be set aside on public policy grounds: Jenton Overseas Investment Pte Ltd v v Townsing [2008] VSC 470 (11 November 2008)...
Forum Non Conveniens and Foreign Law in Australia
Posted on November 20, 2008The High Court of Australia has handed down judgment in Puttick v Tenon Limited (formerly called Fletcher Challenge Forests Limited) [2008] HCA 54 (12 November 2008), the most recent High Court case to consider stay of proceedings and choice of law in an international tort case...
Publication: Hill on Cross-Border Consumer Contracts
Posted on November 19, 2008The very successful Private International Law Series by Oxford University Press adds yet another book to its impressive line-up with Jonathan Hill’s Cross-Border Consumer Contracts. Here’s the blurb: Until relatively recently, almost all contracts were domestic: both the consumer and the supplier were from the same country and the situation involved no substantial foreign elements...
Assistant in Private International Law in Luxembourg
Posted on November 17, 2008The Faculty of Law of the University of Luxembourg is seeking to recruit an Assistant (PhD student) in Private International Law. The candidate should be a PhD student who will be expected to work on his doctorate, to teach a few hours per week (one to three) and to contribute to research projects in private international [...
New Service Regulation No 1393/2007 and Denmark (Update)
Posted on November 17, 2008Following our recent post on the application of Reg. No 1393/2007 since 13 November 2008, and the issue of the participation of Denmark, we would like to point out an item published on the newsletter of the Danish Ministry of Justice (No 119 of 21 December 2007)...
Rome I: Commission?s Opinion on the Opting-In by the UK
Posted on November 15, 2008Following the formal notification of 24 July 2008 by the United Kingdom of its wish to participate in Reg. No 593/2008 (Rome I), the Commission has expressed its opinion - doc. COM 2008(730) fin. of 7 November 2008 - pursuant to the procedure set out in Art...
New Service Regulation Applicable in EU - In Denmark, as well?
Posted on November 14, 2008Starting from yesterday, 13 November 2008, new Regulation No 1393/2007 on the service in the Member States of judicial and extrajudicial documents in civil or commercial matters (see our previous posts here and here) is applicable in the Member States (see its Art...
Daimler Chrysler v Stolzenberg, Part 9: Luxembourg
Posted on November 12, 2008The Stolzenberg case will also be litigated before the European Court of Justice! Last year, the Court of Appeal of Milan, Italy, referred two questions to the ECJ on the interpretation of the public policy clause of Article 27(1) of the 1968 Brussels Convention...
Italian Conference on the Rome I Reg.: ?La nuova disciplina comunitaria della legge applicabile alle obbligazioni contrattuali?
Posted on November 10, 2008A very interesting conference on the Rome I Regulation will be hosted by the University of Venice “Ca’ Foscari” on Friday 28 November 2008: “La nuova disciplina comunitaria della legge applicabile alle obbligazioni contrattuali” (The new EC regime on the law applicable to contractual obligations)...
Latest Issue of ?Praxis des Internationalen Privat- und Verfahrensrechts? (6/2008)
Posted on November 09, 2008Recently, the November/December issue of the German legal journal ?Praxis des Internationalen Privat- und Verfahrensrechts? (IPRax) was released. It contains the following articles/case notes (including the reviewed decisions): B. Hess: “Rechtspolitische Überlegungen zur Umsetzung von Art...
Ontario Court Orders Children Returned to United Kingdom
Posted on November 07, 2008In Courtney v. Springfield (available here) the parties had cohabitated as a same-sex couple for nine years in the United Kingdom and the defendant had adopted two children (the couple could not legally adopt them as a couple). The defendant separated from the plaintiff in 2003 and moved to Ontario with the children in 2007...
French Case on Lis Pendens under Brussels II bis Regulation
Posted on November 06, 2008The French Supreme Court for Private and Criminal Matters (Cour de cassation) handled an interesting decision earlier this year on lis pendens under Regulation 2201/2003 of 27 November 2003 (Brussels IIbis). In this case, two spouses initiated divorce proceedings in England and France the same day...
New publication: Kruger on EU jurisdiction rules and third states
Posted on November 05, 2008T. Kruger, Civil Jurisdiction rules of the EU and their impact on third States, Oxford University Press, 2008, 442p. This new publication by the South African author Dr Thalia Kruger examines the civil jurisdiction rules of the EU, contained in Council Regulations 44/2001 (Brussels I), 2201/2003 (Brussels IIbis), and 1346/2000 (Insolvency Regulation) through the lens [...
Publication: Heidelberg Report on the Application of Regulation Brussels I
Posted on November 05, 2008The General Report of the Study on the Application of Regulation Brussels I in the (former) 25 Member States (Study JLS/C4/2005/03) has recently been published: “The Brussels I Regulation 44/2001 Application and Enforcement in the EU” edited by Burkhard Hess, Thomas Pfeiffer and Peter Schlosser The study has been conducted under the direction of Prof...
Publication: Festschrift Jan Kropholler
Posted on November 03, 2008Recently, the Festschrift in honor of Prof. Dr. Jan Kropholler titled ?Die richtige Ordnung Festschrift für Jan Kropholler zum 70. Geburtstag” (The Right Order. Festschrift for Jan Kropholler on his 70th birthday) edited by Dietmar Baetge, Jan von Hein and Michael von Hinden has been published...
Publication: Cheshire, North & Fawcett on Private International Law
Posted on October 31, 2008The fourteenth edition of one of the world’s leading texts on private international law has just been published. Professor James Fawcett has been elevated to the status of co-author, after twenty-one years at the editorial helm. Sir Peter North, who has been involved with the text since 1970, has handed over his responsibilities to Dr [...
ECJ: New Reference on Art. 11 (2) Brussels I
Posted on October 30, 2008Another new reference on the interpretation of the Brussels I Regulation has been referred to the ECJ for a preliminary ruling: The Landesgericht Feldkirch (Austria) has asked the following questions: Is the reference in Article 11(2) of Council Regulation (EC) No 44/2001 of 22 December 2000 on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in [...
Ruling Dutch Supreme Court on Article 4 Rome Convention
Posted on October 30, 2008On 17 October 2008, the Dutch Supreme Court delivered a judgment in the case Baros A.G. (Switzerland) v. Embrica Maritim Hotelschiffe GmbH (Germany), concerning the application of Article 4 of the Rome Convention (Hoge Raad, 17 October 2008, No C07/037HR; LJN: BE7201)...
French Doctorate on the Use of the Lex Fori
Posted on October 29, 2008Ms Peggy Carlier has recently completed her doctorate at the Universiy of Lille on “How to use the Lex Fori in the Conflict of Laws Process” (”L’utilisation de la lex fori dans la résolution des conflits de lois“). The English abstract reads: By overemphasising the benefits of foreign law as the mean of the resolution of conflicts [...
Reference for preliminary ruling on relationship Insolvency Regulation and Brussels I
Posted on October 29, 2008It has been a while, but this reference for a preliminary ruling is nevertheless worth mentioning. In its judgment of 20 June 2008, the Dutch Supreme Court, in a case between the German company Graphics Graphische Maschinen GmbH and A. van der Schee, acting as liquidator of Holland Binding BV, referred questions to the ECJ [...
Recent Second Circuit Decision: The Courthouse Door is Temporarily Shut, Though Still Left Ajar, for Foreign Securities Plaintiffs
Posted on October 27, 2008National Bank of Australia purchased U.S. mortgage service provider HomeSide Lending Inc. in 1998. Three years later, the bank was forced to admit that its calculations on the amount of fees HomeSide was generating from servicing mortgages were overstated...
Book: Transnational Litigation
Posted on October 23, 2008A new book offers an Irish perspective on international and European litigation. Michelle Smith De Bruin, an Irish barrister at King’s Inns, Dublin, has recently published Transnational Litigation - Jurisdiction and Procedure (Thomson Round Hall Press, hardback)...
Lis pendens in Spain (autonomous PIL)
Posted on October 22, 2008Spanish autonomous PIL regulation is scattered and incomplete. In particular, we still lack of a rule on international lis pendens. The case law position on the matter seems quite clear, however: in the absence of any international agreement, the international lis pendens defense is not allowed: as the foreing ruling does not produce res judicata [...
Ghassemi v. Ghassemi: An Interesting Decision from the Louisiana Court of Appeal
Posted on October 21, 2008This is certainly not the first case, or the last case, to discuss the inherent conflict that results when a state provides that foreign marriages should be recognized, but nonetheless bans a certain form of marriage that is permitted elsewhere. It does, however, illustrate a noteworthy approach where the two states are worlds-apart in [...
On Spanish Civil War and Dictatorship: why not claim abroad?
Posted on October 20, 2008The twentieth century has been the century of human rights vindication. Its last two decades have witnessed a very special phenomenon in this regard: the privatization of lawsuits brought for crimes against the most basic human rights. Individuals, singly or grouped, seek civil redress before domestic courts against the State (its officers, its agents; also [...
French Supreme Court Applies Blocking Statute
Posted on October 20, 2008I should have reported much earlier this interesting case of the French Supreme Court for Private and Criminal Matters (Cour de cassation) which applied for the first time the French 1980 statute which criminalizes cooperation with U.S. discovery procedures...
AG Opinion in Case ?Deko Marty Belgium?
Posted on October 17, 2008Yesterday, the opinion by Advocate General Ruiz-Jarabo Colomer in case C-339/07 (Rechtsanwalt Christopher Seagon als Insolvenzverwalter über das Vermögen der Frick Teppichboden Supermärkte GmbH v Deko Marty Belgium N.V.) has been released. The case concerns the delimitation of Regulation (EC) No...
BIICL Research Fellowship in International Private Law
Posted on October 14, 2008The British Institute of International and Comparative Law is seeking to appoint a Senior Research Fellow in International Private Law. The advertisement can be found here and a full job description can be found here. The post is a research post, with no teaching duties...
ECJ: Judgment in Case ?Grunkin and Paul?
Posted on October 14, 2008Today, the ECJ delivered its judgment in case C-353/06 (Grunkin and Paul) which has been awaited with high interest. As reported in previous posts, the background of the case is as follows: The case concerns a child who was born in Denmark having, as well as his parents, only German nationality...
Japan Accedes to CISG
Posted on October 13, 2008We do not usually report on uniform law, but Japan was one of the few major trading powers which had not acceded to the CISG. The report of the United Nations Information Service is here. Is the UK next? [Click on the title above to view the full item on Conflict of Laws ...
EC Commission Presents a Proposal for a Directive on Consumer Rights
Posted on October 09, 2008On 8 October 2008, Commissioner Meglena Kuneva (DG Health and Consumers) presented a new Proposal for an EC directive on consumer rights (COM(2008) 614) (see the Consumer Acquis webpage). The proposal aims to revise four existing directives on consumer contracts (the cornerstones of EC legislation in the field: Dir...
Third Issue of 2008?s Revue Critique Droit Int?l Privé
Posted on October 08, 2008The third issue of French Revue Critique de Droit International privé for 2008 will be released shortly. It will include four articles, all relating to conflict issues. In the first article, Charalambos Pamboukis, who is a professor at the university of Athens, Greece, explores the renewal and metamorphosis of recognition as a method to address conflicts problems (La renaissance-métamorphose [...
Book: Liber Amicorum Hélène Gaudemet-Tallon
Posted on October 06, 2008The French publisher Dalloz has recently published a very rich collection of essays in honor of Hélène Gaudemet-Tallon, Professor Emeritus at the University of Paris II and Associate Member of the Institut de Droit International, one of French leading scholars in the field of conflicts of laws and jurisdictions (among her recent works, see Le [...
ECJ on Hassett v South Eastern Health Board and Art 22(2) Brussels I
Posted on October 04, 2008The European Court of Justice handed down judgment in Hassett v South Eastern Board on 2nd October 2008. It doesn’t make for particularly interesting reading, so I’ll be brief. The Irish Supreme Court referred the following question to the ECJ: Where medical practitioners form a mutual defence organisation taking the form of a company, incorporated under [...
Spanish PIL periodicals (II): Anuario Español de Derecho Internacional Privado
Posted on October 03, 2008The Anuario Español de Derecho Internacional Privado is an annual magazine specialized in Private International law. It was born in 2000 on an ambitious initiative of Prof. Dr. José Carlos Fernández Rozas (Complutense University, Madrid), in order to provide the Spanish scientific community with accurate and updated information about conflicts of laws in a wide range of [...
Conference on Judicial Cooperation in South-Eastern Europe
Posted on September 30, 2008The final program for the international conference titled ?Regional Cooperation in the Field of Civil Proceedings with an International Element? was distributed this week. This is actually the sixth regional conference where academics and practitioners exchange their views and comments on different topics of conflict of laws and related areas...
Jurisdiction to Prevent the End of the World
Posted on September 30, 2008Which court has jurisdiction to prevent the end of the world? Any, one would think: after all, the end of the world is likely to have serious consequences pretty much everywhere. Is that why an American retired radiation safety officer and a Spanish science writer decided to initiate proceedings in Hawaï to stop the running of the new [...
Incorporation of 2000 Hague Convention in English Law
Posted on September 29, 2008I reported earlier on the entry into force of the 2000 Hague Convention on the International Protection of Adults. An interesting issue is the application of the Convention in England and Wales. The United Kingdom ratified the Convention, but only for Scotland...
Spanish PIL periodicals: la Revista Española de Derecho Internacional
Posted on September 28, 2008The Revista Española de Derecho Internacional (REDI) is one of the main Spanish magazines concerning Private and Public International Law. Dating back to 1948, 57 volumes (two issues per volume; half-yearly periodicity) have already been published. Since 1997 the magazine belongs to the Asociación Española de Profesores de Derecho Internacional y Relaciones Internacionales (AEPDIRI), and [...
Conference: ?La matière civile et commerciale, socle d?un code européen de droit international privé?? (Toulouse, 17 October 2008)
Posted on September 26, 2008An interesting conference will be hosted in Toulouse, on 17 October 2008, by the Institut de Recherche en droit européen, international et comparé (IRDEIC) of the University of Social Sciences of Toulouse: “La matière civile et commerciale, socle d’un code européen de droit international privé?“ (The civil and commercial matters, core of a European Code [...
Second Issue of 2008?s Revue Critique de Droit Int?l Privé
Posted on September 25, 2008The second issue of the French Revue Critique de Droit International Privé was released some time ago. It contains one article and several case commentaries. A table of contents can be found here. The title of the article is the Forum of Necessity (Le for de nécessité : tableau comparatif et évolutif)...
Article: Muir Watt on Economics of Adjudication and Int?l Arbitration
Posted on September 23, 2008In an article forthcoming in the French Revue de l’arbitrage, Horatia Muir Watt (Paris I University) explores further the economics of adjudication and wonders what the implications of the lead taken by international arbitration are for the governance of the global economy...
Spanish International Adoption Act (Law 54/2007, of December 28)
Posted on September 23, 2008The International Adoption Act (Law 54/2007, of December 28), is the first special Private International Law act issued in Spain. It contains a heterogeneous, extensive (possibly the most comprehensive in Comparative Law, with 34 long articles) regulation of international adoption and other measures for protecting incapables...
Proposal EC on Signing of Hague Choice of Court Convention
Posted on September 23, 2008On 5 September 2008 a Proposal for a Council Decision on the signing by the European Community of the Convention on Choice-of-Court Agreements of 2005 (COM(2008) 538 final was presented. The text of the proposal reads as follows: Article 1 - Subject to a possible conclusion at a later date, the signing of the Convention on [...
Hague Convention on Int?l Protection of Adults to Enter into Force
Posted on September 20, 2008The Hague Conference on Private International Law reports that the Hague Convention of 13 January 2000 on the International Protection of Adults will enter into force on January 1st, 2009. This is because a third country, France, has ratified the Convention on September 18th, 2008...
Eighteen Publications on South African Private International Law 2007-2008
Posted on September 19, 2008Sieg Eiselen ?Goodbye arrest ad fundandam. Hello forum non conveniens?? 2008 Tydskrif vir die Suid-Afrikaanse Reg / Journal of South African Law 794 Thalia Kruger Civil Jurisdiction Rules of the EU and their Impact on Third States Oxford University Press 2008 Thalia Kruger ?Regional organisations and their dispute settlement bodies? 2008 De Jure (to be published) Jan L [...
Forum non conveniens and Australian family law cases
Posted on September 18, 2008Frank Bates, Professor of Law at the University of Newcastle (New South Wales), has a short article entitled ‘Stay Proceedings and Forum Non Conveniens in Recent Australian Family Law’ at (2008) 57(3) International and Comparative Law Quarterly 649...
Article: How Modern Assisted Reproductive Technologies Challenge the Traditional Realm of Conflicts of Law
Posted on September 17, 2008Sonya Bichkov Green (John Marshall Law School) has written an article on the conflict-of-laws issues arising out of Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART), focusing on the current legal and judicial framework in the United States (see our previous posts by Gilles Cuniberti on a case of surrogate parenthood involving French authorities: 1, 2): “Interstate Intercourse: How [...
Article: Liberating the Individual from Battles Between States ? Justifying Party Autonomy in Conflict of Laws
Posted on September 15, 2008Matthias Lehmann has written an article that, while trying to give a theoretical justification for the principle of party autonomy, attacks the dominant conception of conflict of laws. It has been published in vol. 41 of the Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, pp...
AG Opinion in Case ?Ilsinger?
Posted on September 14, 2008On 11 September 2008, Advocate General Trstenjak’s opinion in case C-180/06 (Renate Ilsinger v. Martin Dreschers (administrator in the insolvency of Schlank & Schick GmbH) has been published. The case basically concerns the question whether international jurisdiction for consumer claims against undertakings for prizes ostensibly won can be established under Art...
Papers Published from the Duke Symposium on the European Choice of Law Revolution
Posted on September 13, 2008The papers presented at the Duke University School of Law Symposium on ‘The New European Choice of Law Revolution: Lessons for the United States?‘ have now been published in the Tulane Law Review (Vol. 82, No. 5, May 2008). Here’s the table of contents: Ralf Michaels, Introduction - The New European Choice-of-Law Revolution (available on SSRN); Patrick [...
Latest Issue of ?Praxis des Internationalen Privat- und Verfahrensrechts? (5/2008)
Posted on September 11, 2008Recently, the September/October issue of the German legal journal ?Praxis des Internationalen Privat- und Verfahrensrechts? (IPRax) was released. It contains the following articles/case notes (including the reviewed decisions): Rolf Wagner: “Der Grundsatz der Rechtswahl und das mangels Rechtswahl anwendbare Recht (Rom I-Verordnung) - Ein Bericht über die Entstehungsgeschichte und den Inhalt der Artikel 3 und 4 Rom [...
Garsec Pty Ltd v His Majesty The Sultan of Brunei
Posted on September 10, 2008The New South Wales Court of Appeal recently handed down its decision in the interesting forum non conveniens case of Garsec Pty Ltd v His Majesty The Sultan of Brunei [2008] NSWCA 211. The case arose out of an alleged contract for the sale of an old, rare and beautiful manuscript copy of the Koran by [...
Choice of Law for Procedural Matters in Patent Cases: A New Article
Posted on September 09, 2008Ted Field, a Visiting Assistant Professor of Law at Chicago-Kent has recently posted an Article entitled Improving the Federal Circuit’s Approach to Choice of Law for Procedural Matters in Patent Cases on SSRN. Here is the Abstract: Because of its virtually exclusive jurisdiction over patent cases from the entire country, the United States Court of Appeals [...
French Tax Authorities Recognize Dutch Same-Sex Marriage
Posted on September 08, 2008Le Monde has reported this week that the French Ministry of Finance has accepted to recognize a Dutch same-sex marriage for tax purposes. According to the article, the two Dutch men had married in Leyden in 2002. They then moved to France, probably in 2004...
Guest Editorial: Hay on Recognition of a Recognition Judgment under Brussels I?
Posted on September 08, 2008Prof. Peter Hay is one of the most distinguished comparative law scholars in the US. He was Alumni Distinguished Professor of Law and dean at the University of Illinois before joining Emory in 1991. Since 1975 he has been an honorary professor at the University of Freiburg in Germany...
Conference: Arbitration and EC Law
Posted on September 05, 2008The Heidelberg Centre for International Dispute Resolution at the Institute for Private International and Comparative Law will host a conference with the topic “Arbitration and EC Law - Current Issues and Trends”. The conference will focus on the relations between European civil procedure and arbitration which have been an intensely debated topic among legal scholars and practitioners [...
The AG Opinion in West Tankers
Posted on September 05, 2008Advocate General Kokott’s Opinion in Allianz SpA (formerly Riunione Adriatica Di Sicurta SpA) and Others v West Tankers Inc. is out, and the House of Lords (and most common law practitioners) are not going to find it a pleasurable read. The question, you will remember, is whether anti-suit injunctions to give effect to arbitration agreements are [...
Third Issue of 2008?s Journal du Droit International
Posted on September 03, 2008The third issue of French Journal du Droit International (also known as Clunet) was just released. It contains two articles dealing with conflict issues. In the first, Pierre Berlioz, who lectures at Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne) University, seeks to define the notion of provision of services for the purpose of article 5-1 b) of the Brussels I [...
Immunity of Foreign Central Banks Assets in Belgium
Posted on September 02, 2008Patrick Wautelet is a professor of law at the University of Liège (Belgium). Belgium has recently adopted a specific legislation granting immunity of enforcement to assets held by foreign central banks and international monetary institutions, such as the World Bank...
Reference on Art. 5 No. 1 (b) Brussels I: Distinction between sales of goods/provision of services and determination of place of performance regarding contract involving carriage of the goods
Posted on September 01, 2008With a decision of 9th July 2008, the German Federal Supreme Court (Bundesgerichtshof) has referred a reference to the ECJ for a preliminary ruling on the interpretation of Art. 5 No. 1 (b) Brussels I Regulation. The German-Italian case concerns contracts for the delivery of goods to be manufactured or produced which, however, showed certain [...
Colloquium on the Choice of Courts Convention
Posted on August 29, 2008The Hague Convention on Choice of Court Agreements is the result of negotiations that began at The Hague Conference on Private International Law in 1992, when the United States asked for the Conference to develop a convention on jurisdiction and judgments...
Submission of Abstracts for the 2009 NYU Conference
Posted on August 26, 2008The Journal of Private International Law will hold its third major conference at New York University on April 17-18, 2009. As was the practice at the prior conferences at the University of Aberdeen in 2005 and at the University of Birmingham in 2007, we are including a ?call for papers? to be presented at [...
Weintraub on Rome II: Simple and Predictable, Consequences-Based, or Neither?
Posted on August 25, 2008Prof. Russell J Weintraub (University of Texas at Austin, School of Law) has published an interesting article on the Rome II Regulation in the latest issue of the Texas International Law Journal (Summer 2008): ?The Choice-of-Law Rules of the European Community Regulation on the Law Applicable to Non-Contractual Obligations: Simple and Predictable, Consequences-Based, or Neither?? [...
Hamburg Lectures on Maritime Affairs
Posted on August 21, 2008From 25 August to 20 October 2008 this year’s Hamburg Lectures on Maritime Affairs, organised by the International Max Planck Research School for Maritime Affairs and the International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), will take place in Hamburg...
Rome I Regulation Conference - Now CPD Accredited
Posted on August 20, 2008Our conference on the Rome I Regulation: New Choice of Law Rules in Contract, to take place at Herbert Smith’s offices in London on 19th September 2008, is now accredited with CPD by both the Solicitors Regulation Authority (5.5 hours) and the Bar Standards Board (5 hours)...
Drawing a Line in the Sand: Personal Jurisdiction for Acts of Terrorism
Posted on August 14, 2008The Second Circuit today issued a noteworthy decision on whether and when foreign individuals are subject to personal jurisdiction in U.S. Courts for acts of international terrorism. See In re Terrorist Attacks on September 11, 2001, No. 06-cv-0319 (2d Cir...
Article on Rome I Regulation
Posted on August 14, 2008Stefan Leible and Matthias Lehmann (both University of Bayreuth, Germany) have published an article on the Rome I Regulation: “Die Verordnung über das auf vertragliche Schuldverhältnisse anzuwendende Recht (”Rom I”). The article has appeared in the August issue of the German legal journal Recht der Internationalen Wirtschaft (RIW), 2008, pp...
Reminder: Essay Competition in Private International Law 1st September Deadline
Posted on August 13, 2008A short note to remind all that the deadline for the Conflict of Laws .net Essay Competition in Private International Law, sponsored by Clifford Chance LLP and Hart Publishing, is 1st September 2008 at 6pm. There are substantial prizes for the top three entries, and the best essays will be submitted for consideration to the Journal [...
Jurisdiction over Foreign Defendants and Jurisdiction over Foreign Land: One Question or Two?
Posted on August 12, 2008The Court of Appeal for Ontario has released its decision in Precious Metal Capital Corp. v. Smith (available here). In many ways the decision is unexceptional: it agrees with a quite sensible decision by the judge at first instance. But there may be a more interesting, and contentious, aspect to the decision in the way [...
Volume 4, Issue 2, Journal of Private International Law (August 2008)
Posted on August 12, 2008The August 2008 issue of the Journal of Private International Law has just been published. The contents are (click on the links to view the abstracts on the Hart Publishing website): A Bucher, ‘The New Swiss Federal Act on International Child Abduction’ J Neels, ‘Falconbridge in Africa’ A Mills, ‘The Dimensions of Public [...
Symeonides: Choice of Law for Products Liability
Posted on August 07, 2008Symeon C. Symeonides, Dean of the College of Law at Willamette University, has just last week posted Choice of Law for Products Liability: The 1990s and Beyond (forthcoming on the Tulane Law Review, Vol. 78, No. 1247, 2004) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: This Article provides a comprehensive review of product-liability conflicts cases decided [...
ERA Conference on Recent Developments in Private International Law and Business Law
Posted on August 03, 2008The Academy of European Law (ERA), situated in Trier and with the financial support of the European Commission, organises conferences and summer schools on various topics of EU law. On 5-6 June a conference was held on recent developments in private international law and business law (covering civil jurisdiction, civil procedure, contract, delict, insolvency, and [...
A Divided Opinion on the Hague Abduction Convention, With Some Interesting Discussion on the Proof of Foreign Law
Posted on July 31, 2008The Second Circuit last week issued a split-panel decision in Duran v. Beaumont, No. 06-cv-5614 (2d Cir. 2008). The case concerned a Chilean mothers? decision to take her child to the USA and remain there, in derogation of a Chilean court order. The child?s parents?both Chilean?are recently separated, with formal custody not yet [...
Save the Date - Journal of Private International Law Conference 2009
Posted on July 29, 2008Following on from the success of the Journal of Private International Law’s inaugural conference at Aberdeen in 2005, and last year’s conference at Birmingham, the 2009 conference will be held on 16th - 18th April 2009 at New York University School of Law...
The Results of the JHA Council (24-25 July 2008): UK to Opt into Rome I Reg. - Enhanced Cooperation on Rome III Reg.?
Posted on July 27, 2008On 24 and 25 July the Justice and Home Affairs Council held its 2887th session in Brussels, the first under the French Presidency. The official press release is currently available only in French. Among the ?Justice? issues, discussed on Friday 25th, two main points are of particular importance as regards the development of European private [...
When the Forum Conveniens Can Be ?Convinced? to Refuse the Case
Posted on July 23, 2008Roger Alford at Opinio juris has an interesting post on a recent American case where an American court declined jurisdiction based on forum non conveniens, but found out during the appeal that the foreign court had itself declined jurisdiction. As a consequence, the alternative available forum had disappeared, and it seemed like the American court [...
New Reference for Preliminary Ruling on Brussels I
Posted on July 19, 2008A new reference regarding the Brussels I Regulation is pending at the ECJ. The Bundesgerichtshof (Germany) has referred the following questions for a preliminary ruling: Is the second indent of Article 5(1)(b) of Council Regulation (EC) No 44/2001 of 22 December 2000 on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters [...
Publication: European Enforcement Order for Uncontested Claims
Posted on July 15, 2008David-Christoph Bittmann: “Vom Exequatur zum qualifizierten Klauselerteilungsverfahren” This new German publication analyses from a comparative perspective as to whether the new procedure introduced by Regulation (EC) No 805/2004 creating a European Enforcement Order for Uncontested Claims actually constitutes an advancement for the creditor without disregarding the debtor’s rights in comparison with the previous exequatur proceedings...
Arbitral Awards Violating European Antitrust Laws: French Courts Cannot Help
Posted on July 14, 2008Are French courts willing to review arbitral awards on the ground that arbitrators violated European antitrust laws? As a matter of principle, French courts are extremely reluctant to review arbitral awards on the merits. In theory, an exception remains when the award violates French international public policy, but actual instances where French courts have found [...
Judgment in Case ?Inga Rinau? - Urgent Preliminary Ruling Procedure
Posted on July 11, 2008Today, the ECJ delivered its judgment in case Inga Rinau (C-195/08 PPU) which seems to be the first case under the urgent preliminary ruling procedure. The judgment is not available in English yet, however in French, Italian, German and several other languages...
Article on the interaction of choice of law rules and the Australian Constitution
Posted on July 09, 2008Christopher Kourakis, the Solicitor-General for the State of South Australia, has an interesting article on the interaction of choice of law rules and the Australian Constitution in cases of conflict between state laws in volume 28 of the Adelaide Law Review...
Kozyris on Rome II: Tort Conflicts on the Right Track! A Postscript to Symeon Symeonides? ?Missed Opportunity?
Posted on July 09, 2008Prof. John Phaedon Kozyris (Universities of Thessaloniki and Ohio State) has published a very interesting article on Rome II in the latest issue of the American Journal of Comparative Law (Vol. 56(2), 2008): Rome II: Tort Conflicts on the Right Track! A Postscript to Symeon Symeonides’ ?Missed Opportunity? (56 Am...
New References on Brussels I Regulation
Posted on July 06, 2008Two new references for preliminary rulings on the Brussels I Regulation have been referred to the ECJ: 1. The Hof van Cassatie van België has referred the following question to the ECJ: Is a creditor who pursues a claim in the name and for the account of his debtor a party within the meaning of Article 43(1) [...
Latest Issue of ?Praxis des Internationalen Privat- und Verfahrensrechts? (4/2008)
Posted on July 05, 2008Recently, the July/August issue of the German legal journal ?Praxis des Internationalen Privat- und Verfahrensrechts? (IPRax) was released. It contains the following articles/case notes (including the reviewed decisions): Burkhard Hess/David Bittmann: “Die Verordnungen zur Einführung eines Europäischen Mahnverfahrens und eines Europäischen Verfahrens für geringfügige Forderungen - ein substantieller Integrationsschritt im Europäischen Zivilprozessrecht” - the English abstract reads [...
Rome I Regulation Published in the Official Journal
Posted on July 04, 2008The Rome I Regulation (see the dedicated section of our site, and the programme of the forthcoming conference organized by the Journal of Private International Law) has been published in the Official Journal of the European Union n. L 177 of 4 July 2008...
Which Law Governed at Abu Ghraib?
Posted on July 03, 2008Four Iraqis who were detained in Abu Ghraib have sued U.S. military contractors before American courts. The cases were filed on June 30, 2008, in federal courts of Maryland, Ohio, Michigan and Washington state, where individual contractors reside. The plaintiffs are represented by law firms in Philadelphia and Detroit and by the Centre for Constitutional [...
Book: Calvo Caravaca / Carrascosa González - Las obligaciones extracontractuales en derecho internacional privado. El Reglamento Roma II
Posted on June 29, 2008Prof. Alfonso-Luis Calvo Caravaca (University Carlos III of Madrid) and Prof. Javier Carrascosa González (University of Murcia) have recently published their latest work, devoted to tort conflicts: “Las obligaciones extracontractuales en derecho internacional privado...
Publication: Briggs on Agreements on Jurisdiction and Choice of Law
Posted on June 27, 2008It has been our book of the month for a few weeks now, but as yet we have not formally announced the publication of Professor Adrian Briggs‘ latest work, Agreements on Jurisdiction and Choice of Law (Oxford, OUP, 2008). So, here’s the blurb: In this book, the author analyses the law and practice relating to [...
Exxon, Punitive Damages and the Conflict of Laws
Posted on June 26, 2008Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered its decision in Exxon v. Baker. The central issue of the case was whether an award of punitive damages of US$ 2.5 billion (as reduced by the lower courts from an initial award of US$ 5 billion) was excessive as a matter of maritime common law...
First Issue of 2008?s Revue Critique de Droit International Privé
Posted on June 24, 2008The first issue of 2008’s Revue Critique de Droit International Privé has just been released. It contains three articles, but only one dealing with a conflict issue per se, the public law exception within the Brussels I Regulation after the Lechouritou case (”Les actes jure imperii et le Règlement Bruxelles I - A propos de [...
Conference: The Rome I Regulation - New Choice of Law Rules in Contract
Posted on June 23, 2008We are pleased to announce the: Journal of Private International Law Conference The Rome I Regulation: New Choice of Law Rules in Contract Friday 19th September 2008 Herbert Smith, Exchange House, London The full programme, also set out below, can be found on our dedicated conference page...
New Reference on Brussels II bis
Posted on June 21, 2008Another reference for a preliminary ruling on the Brussels II bis Regulation has been referred to the ECJ, this time by the Republic of Lithuania. The Lithuanian court (Lietuvos Auk??iausiasis Teismas) has referred the following questions to the ECJ: Can an interested party within the meaning of Article 21 of Council Regulation (EC) No 2201/2003 apply for [...
Ph.D. Grants of the International Max Planck Research School for Maritime Affairs
Posted on June 19, 2008The International Max Planck Research School for Maritime Affairs at the University of Hamburg will award for the period commencing 1 October 2008 six Ph.D. grants for a term of two years. The particular area of emphasis to be supported by this round of grants is the Implications of Climatic Changes in the Arctic...
The Standard of Proof of Facts going to Jurisdiction
Posted on June 17, 2008The recent case of Purple Echo Productions, Inc. v. KCTS Television, 2008 BCCA 85 (available here) addresses, at some length, the standard of proof required of jurisdictional facts. I have recently co-written an article on a related topic - the standard of proof for jurisdiction clauses - in the Canadian Business Law Journal...
New References for Preliminary Rulings
Posted on June 17, 2008New references for preliminary rulings on the interpretation of the Brussels I Regulation, the Brussels II bis Regulation and the Insolvency Regulation have been referred to the ECJ: 1. Reference on Brussels I Regulation The Swedish Högsta Domstolen has referred the following question to the ECJ: Is the exception in the Brussels I Regulation regarding insolvency, compositions and [...
Book: Conflits de Lois et Régulation Economique
Posted on June 15, 2008This interesting book on Conflict of Laws and Economic Regulation gathers the contributions of the speakers to a conference held in Paris a year ago. It is edited by three French scholars, Mathias Audit, Horatia Muir Watt (who was our Guest Editor last month) and Etienne Pataut, who all teach in Paris...
Article on the Eurofood Case
Posted on June 13, 2008Matteo M. Winkler, an Italian scholar and practising lawyer in Milan, has recently published an article on the Eurofood case in the Berkeley Journal of International Law: From Whipped Cream to Multibillion Euro Financial Collapse: The European Regulation on Transnational Insolvency in Action...
A Round-Up of Articles Recently Published
Posted on June 10, 2008Conflicts scholars have been busy since my last round-up of published articles in February, so the time seems ripe for another list of potential material to add to your reading pile. The usual caveats apply: the list is limited to articles published in English, and even then is almost certainly not comprehensive...
Rome I Reg. Adopted (and Other Results of the JHA Council Session of 5-6 June 2008)
Posted on June 09, 2008Following our post on the agenda of the JHA session held in Luxembourg on 5-6 June 2008, a factsheet has been released by the Slovenian Presidency with the main results of the Council in the field of judicial cooperation in civil matters. The first and most important achievement is the adoption of the Rome I Regulation [...
Dutch Reference for a Preliminary Ruling on Art. 4 of the Rome Convention (Update)
Posted on June 06, 2008Following our post on the first reference for a preliminary ruling on the Rome Convention on the law applicable to contractual obligations, the questions referred by the Dutch Supreme Court (Hoge Raad) have been published on the ECJ’s website. The case, lodged on 2 April 2008, is pending under C-133/08, ICF (Intercontainer Interfrigo (ICF) SC v [...
Suit Challenges Decision of New York to Recognize Same-Sex Unions
Posted on June 04, 2008A law suit was filed in New York on June 3rd to challenge the decision of New York Governor to recognize same-sex unions. It is argued that the Legislature was the sole branch of government which could have made such decision, and that the Governor, who is the executive power of the state of New York, [...
JHA Council Session (5-6 June 2008): Adoption of the Rome I Reg. - Political Guidelines on Rome III and Maintenance Reg. - External Dimension of JHA
Posted on June 04, 2008On 5 and 6 June the Justice and Home Affairs Council will hold its 2873rd session in Luxembourg, the last under the Slovenian Presidency. Among the ?Justice? issues, scheduled for Friday 6th, the Council is expected to adopt the Rome I Regulation on the law applicable to contractual obligations (see the list of public deliberations; [...
Directive on Mediation in Civil and Commercial Matters
Posted on June 03, 2008On 21 May, the Directive 2008/52/EC on certain aspects of mediation in civil and commercial matters has been adopted. As stated in its Article 1, the aim of the directive is to facilitate access to alternative dispute resolution and to promote the amicable settlement of disputes by encouraging the use of mediation and by ensuring a balanced [...
Canadian Conflicts Publications
Posted on June 03, 2008During a recent round-up of Canadian publications dealing with the conflict of laws, I have found the following articles which some might find of interest: - Robert Flannigan, “The Use of Foreign Forms to Circumvent Local Liability Rules” (2007) 44 Alta...
French Marriage Annulled for Lack of Virginity
Posted on June 02, 2008On April 1st 2008, a first instance court of Lille (Northern France) set aside a marriage because the wife had concealed to her husband that she was not a virgin. The husband found out on July 8th, 2006, that is the night of the wedding. Contrary to what she had told him, the wife was not [...
Trinity College Dublin to Host Conference on Rome II Regulation
Posted on June 02, 2008On June 21, 2008, Trinity College Dublin is hosting a conference on the Rome II regulation on the law applicable to non-contractual obligations. Full details are available here. The conference will examine the regulation and its implications for the practice of tort law...
New York Agencies to Recognize Same Sex Unions
Posted on May 29, 2008The New York Times reports that the Governor of the State of New York has directed all New York state agencies to revise all statutes and regulations of the State so that same sex unions or marriages can be recognized in New York “as any other legally performed union”...
BIICL event: Group Actions, including Class Actions: Cross-border Aspects
Posted on May 29, 2008As part of the BIICL?s 2007-2008 Seminar Series on Private International Law the BIICL organizes on Monday 23 June 2008 17:30 to 19:30 (British Institute of International and Comparative Law, Charles Clore House, 17 Russell Square, London, WC1B 5JP) a seminar titled ?Group Actions, including Class Actions: Cross-border Aspects?...
BIICL event: Rome I Regulation: The UK Set to Opt-in
Posted on May 29, 2008As part of the BIICL?s 2007-2008 Seminar Series on Private International Law the BIICL organizes on Wednesday 18 June 2008 17:30 to 19:30 (British Institute of International and Comparative Law, Council Chamber, Charles Clore House, 17 Russell Square, London, WC1B 5JP) a seminar titled ?Rome I Regulation: The UK Set to Opt-in?...
BIICL event: Matrimonial Property Regimes in the Conflict of Laws: A European Regime?
Posted on May 29, 2008As part of the BIICL?s 2007-2008 Seminar Series on Private International Law the BIICL organizes on Monday 16 June 2008 17:30 to 19:30 (at British Institute of International and Comparative Law, Council Chamber, Charles Clore House, 17 Russell Square, London, WC1B 5JP) a seminar titled ?Matrimonial Property Regimes in the Conflict of Laws: A European [...
High Court of Australia grants special leave in Puttick v Fletcher Challenge Forests
Posted on May 28, 2008The High Court of Australia has just granted special leave to appeal in Puttick v Fletcher Challenge Forests Pty Ltd, an interesting case about jurisdiction and choice of law arising out of a negligent omission. The decision of the Victorian Court of Appeal can be seen here...
First Reference for a Preliminary Ruling on the Rome Convention
Posted on May 28, 2008On 28 March 2008, in case Intercontainer Interfrigo (ICF) S.C./M.I.C. Operations B.V. and another (Nr. C06/318HR - LJN BC2726), the Dutch Supreme Court (Hoge Raad) made a preliminary reference to the ECJ, with regard to the interpretation of Art. 4 of the 1980 Rome Convention on the law applicable to contractual obligations...
2007?s Yearbook of Private International Law
Posted on May 27, 2008The Yearbook of Private International Law for 2007 will soon be out. Its main focus is on the Rome II Regulation, with the following articles: Gerhard Hohloch: Place of Injury, Habitual Residence, Closer Connections and Substantive Scope ? the Basic Principles Th...
Second Issue of 2008?s Journal du Droit International
Posted on May 25, 2008The second issue of French Journal du Droit International (also known as Clunet) will be released shortly. It does not contain articles which directly deal with conflict issues. Yet, three of them might be of interest for readers of this blog. This first is authored by Tunisian professor Lofti Chedly and discusses 14 years of application [...
Symeonides: Result-Selectivism in Private International Law
Posted on May 23, 2008Symeon C. Symeonides (Dean, College of Law - Willamette University) has posted Result-Selectivism in Private International Law (forthcoming on the Roman. Priv. Int’l L.& Comp.Priv. L. Rev., 2008) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: One of the basic dilemmas of conflicts law, or private international law (PIL), is whether, in choosing the law applicable to cases [...
ECJ: Judgment in Case ?Laboratoires Glaxosmithkline?
Posted on May 22, 2008Today, the ECJ delivered the judgment in case C-462/06 (Laboratoires Glaxosmithkline) dealing with the interpretation of Art. 6 point 1 and Section 5 of Chapter II of the Brussels I Regulation. The French Cour de Cassation had referred the following question to the ECJ for a preliminary ruling: Does the rule of special jurisdiction stated in [...
German Annotation on first ECJ Judgment on Brussels II bis
Posted on May 21, 2008In November 2007, the ECJ delivered its first judgment on the Brussels II bis Regulation (C-435/06, Applicant C). Anatol Dutta (Hamburg) has now commented on this judgment in the German legal journal “Zeitschrift für das gesamte Familienrecht” (FamRZ): “Staatliches Wächteramt und europäisches Kindschaftsverfahrensrecht...
Personal Property Securities in Australia
Posted on May 20, 2008The Commonwealth Attorney-General has recently released a Consultation Draft of the Personal Property Securities Bill 2008 and an accompanying commentary. The Bill aims to provide a national system to regulate security interests in all property other than land, and would replace over 70 Commonwealth, State and Territory enactments...
A short but interesting Australian case
Posted on May 19, 2008Armacel Pty Ltd v Smurfit Stone Container Corporation [2008] FCA 592 is a recent case in which the judgment of Jacobson J in the Australian Federal Court, though short, raises a number of interesting issues. The case arose out of a dispute between Armacel Pty Ltd, an Australian company, and Smurfit Stone Container Corporation, a US [...
Conference: International Society of Family Law
Posted on May 18, 2008From 16th to 20th September 2008, the 13th World Conference of the International Society of Family Law will take place in Vienna. The topic of the conference is “Family Finances”. A preliminary programme as well as further information on the venue, registration etc...
Annotation on ECJ Judgment in ?FBTO Schadeverzekeringen?
Posted on May 15, 2008Thomas Thiede and Katarzyna Ludwichowska (both Vienna) have written a comment (in German) on the ECJ’s judgment in case C-463/06 (FBTO Schadeverzekeringen) in the latest issue of the legal journal Versicherungsrecht (VersR 2008, 631 et seq.). An English abstract has been kindly provided by the authors: The authors criticise the judgment of the European Court of [...
Swiss Institute of Comparative Law: Prof. Sturm?s Lecture on ?Le nom en droit international privé?
Posted on May 14, 2008On Thursday 15 May 2008, at 17.00, the Swiss Institute of Comparative Law (ISDC, Lausanne) will host a lecture (in French) by Prof. Fritz Sturm (University of Lausanne) on “Le nom en droit international privé” (”Name in Private International Law”)...
A Legislative Solution For Cross-Border Defamation Claims
Posted on May 14, 2008The State of New York, and?recently?the United States Congress?are presently considering enacting laws that would give American authors legal recourse when they are sued abroad for defamation over literary works that would otherwise fall within the broad protections of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution...
Book: La Unión Europea ante el Derecho de la Globalización
Posted on May 12, 2008An interesting volume, collecting the contributions presented at the Seminario de Otoño de Derecho Internacional Privado (Fall Seminar on Private International Law), hosted in October 2007 by the University Carlos III of Madrid, has been recently published by Editorial Colex, under the editorship of Prof...
Conference: ?Le droit français et le droit brésilien d?aujourd?hui : éléments de comparaison?
Posted on May 10, 2008Centre du droit de l`enterprise at Université Robert Schuman (URS) organizes on 17 June 2008, at Maison Interuniversitaire des Sciences de l’Homme-Alsace (MISHA) (5 allée du Général Rouvillois, Strasbourg), a comparative law day with several private international law related topics on the agenda...
Latest Issue of ?Praxis des Internationalen Privat- und Verfahrensrechts? (3/2008)
Posted on May 09, 2008Recently, the May/June issue of the German legal journal “Praxis des Internationalen Privat- und Verfahrensrechts? (IPRax) was released. It contains the following articles/case notes (including the reviewed decisions): M. Stürner: “Staatenimmunität und Brüssel I-Verordnung ? Die zivilprozessuale Behandlung von Entschädigungsklagen wegen Kriegsverbrechen im Europäischen Justizraum” - The English abstract reads as follows: The article examines the impact of [...
Developments in the Recognition of Foreign Class Action Judgments
Posted on May 08, 2008With the courts of Canadian provinces willing to take jurisdiction over a ?national? class claim, involving a plaintiff class which includes members located in other provinces, and with American courts willing to take jurisdiction over ?international? classes, involving a plaintiff class which includes members located in Canada, Canadian courts are increasingly having to confront the [...
ECJ: Judgment on Service Regulation (Weiss und Partner)
Posted on May 08, 2008Today, the ECJ delivered its judgment in case C-14/07 (Weiss und Partner). The German Federal Supreme Court (Bundesgerichtshof) had referred the following questions to the ECJ for a preliminary ruling: Must Article 8(1) of Council Regulation (EC) No 1348/2000 of 29 May 2000 on the service in the Member States of judicial and extrajudicial documents in civil [...
Recent Article Entitled ?Pleading and Proving Foreign Law in Australia?
Posted on May 07, 2008James McComish, my Australian Conflict of Laws.net co-editor, has recently had published an article entitled “Pleading and Proving Foreign Law in Australia” in volume 31(2) of the Melbourne University Law Review. The abstract reads: Foreign law lies at the heart of private international law...
Inconsistent State Laws in Australia
Posted on May 07, 2008Australian commentators have long speculated about whether the federal Constitution contains any rule that would resolve a direct conflict between the statute law of two States. Thus far, the High Court has defused potential conflicts without the need for such a constitutional rule...
High Court of Australia Considers Hague Convention on Child Abduction
Posted on May 07, 2008The High Court of Australia has recently addressed the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction: MW v Director-General, Department of Community Services [2008] HCA 12. In a 3:2 decision, the Court considered that the Director-General (as State Central Authority) had not sufficiently established that the removal of a child from New [...
Rome II: a Critical Appraisal of the Conflict Rule on Culpa In Contrahendo
Posted on May 06, 2008Prof. Rafael Arenas Garcia (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and Àrea de Dret Internacional Privat blog) has written an interesting article on the controversial issue of the law applicable to culpa in contrahendo, discussing the conflict rule set out in Art...
Interesting Case at the Confluence of Choice of Law, Comity and the Hague Abduction Convention
Posted on May 02, 2008?At the heart of this sad case, which raises questions of international and federal law under the Hague [Abduction] Convention, is a custody battle over a young girl who has not seen either of her parents in years.? That was the lead-in from Judge Jordan to the recent decision by a three-judge panel of [...
Spanish Reference for a Preliminary Ruling on the Service Regulation
Posted on April 29, 2008The Spanish Juzgado de Primera Instancia e Instrucción (Court of First Instance and Preliminary Investigations) No 5 of San Javier has referred the following questions to the European Court of Justice for a preliminary ruling on the interpretation of Reg...
Swiss Institute of Comparative Law: Proceedings of the Colloquium on the New Lugano Convention
Posted on April 24, 2008The contributions presented at the 19th Journée de droit international privé, held in March 2007 at the Swiss Institute of Comparative Law (ISDC) and dedicated to the new Lugano Convention, have been published by Schulthess, under the editorship of Andrea Bonomi, Eleanor Cashin Ritaine and Gian Paolo Romano: La Convention de Lugano...
Advocate General?s Opinion in Case ?Grunkin and Paul?
Posted on April 24, 2008Today, Advocate General Sharpston has delivered her opinion in case C-353/06 (Grunkin and Paul). The background of the case is as follows: The case concerns a child who was born in Denmark having, as well as his parents, only German nationality. The child was registered in Denmark ? in accordance with Danish law ? under the [...
Conference: International Law Association Conference 2008
Posted on April 22, 2008The 73rd. Conference of the International Law Association, hosted by its Brazilian Branch, will take place in the city of Rio de Janeiro, at the InterContinental Hotel, August 17-21 2008. The central theme of the Conference will be “Law for the Future,” focusing on Natural Resources and Sustainable Development, Rights of the Human Person, Resolution [...
Conference: ABA International 2008 Fall Meeting
Posted on April 22, 2008The ABA Section of International Law (ABA International) organizes its 2008 Fall Meeting in Brussels, Belgium, September 23-27 with several private international law related topics on the agenda. Read the letter of the Chair (Aaron Schildhaus) of the ABA Section of International Law (ABA International) here, and see the program agenda here...
Volume 4, Issue 1, Journal of Private International Law
Posted on April 22, 2008The April 2008 issue of the Journal of Private International Law has just been published. The contents are (click on the links to view the abstracts on the Hart Publishing website): Articles M. Keyes, “Statutes, Choice of Law, and the Role of Forum Choice” Z...
Article: Jurisdiction for Insolvency-Related Proceedings
Posted on April 20, 2008Anatol Dutta (Hamburg) has written an article on the German reference for a preliminary ruling in Seagon v. Deko Marty Belgium NV (Case C-339/07): Jurisdiction for insolvency-related proceedings caught between European legislation, Lloyd’s Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly (LMCLQ) 2008, p...
Research School on Successful Dispute Settlement in International Law
Posted on April 18, 2008The University of Heidelberg Law School awards in cooperation with the Max-Planck-Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law Doctoral Research Positions (starting June 2008, duration: up to 3 years) for studies leading to a Doctorate in Law (Dr...
Book: The External Dimension of EC Private International Law in Family and Succession Matters
Posted on April 17, 2008The papers presented at the international conference held in March 2007 at the University Carlo Cattaneo of Castellanza (see our previous post), and a final report drafted on the basis of the discussion that arose in the colloquium, have been published by CEDAM, under the editorship of Alberto Malatesta, Stefania Bariatti and Fausto Pocar: “EU [...
BIICL event: Cross-border insolvency of financial groups
Posted on April 15, 2008As part of the BIICL’s 2007-2008 Seminar Series on Private International Law the BIICL organizes on Thursday 17 April 2008 17:30 to 19:30 (at British Institute of International and Comparative Law, Charles Clore House, 17 Russell Square, London, WC1B 5JP) a seminar titled ?Financial Groups: A Fragmented EU Insolvency Regime?...
Rome I: Statements by the Council and the Commission on Insurance Contracts and by the French Delegation on Consumer Contracts
Posted on April 11, 2008Following our post on the release of the final text of the Rome I Regulation, an internal document by the General Secretariat of the Council to the Permanent Representatives Committee (COREPER) confirms that the new Regulation will be soon adopted by the Council (doc...
Summer Seminar in Urbino
Posted on April 11, 2008Readers of the blog may be interested in this summer seminar where many courses on conflicts are taught. The seminar has been hosted by the university of Urbino, Italy, for 50 years. Courses of Private International Law, Comparative Law and European Law are taught either in French or in Italian (with a translation in the other [...
Dutch Supreme Court Refers Questions on Article 5(3) Brussels I Regulation
Posted on April 10, 2008Hoge Raad, 4 April 2008, Zuid-Chemie/Philippo?s Mineralenfabriek Nr. C06/310HR (link is to decision in Dutch). On Friday 4 April, the Dutch Supreme Court (Hoge Raad) made a preliminary reference to the ECJ, with regard to the interpretation of article 5(3) of Regulation 44/2001 (jurisdiction in matters relating to tort)...
The Croatian Administrative Court Ruling: Foreigners Eligible for Compensation for, or Return of, the Property in Croatia Taken During the Communist Era
Posted on April 09, 2008On 14 February 2008, the Administrative Court of the Republic of Croatia rendered the first decision that will enable the return of the nationalised property to a foreigner. The right to return of or the right to be compensated for the apartment building, located in the centre of the Croatian capital Zagreb and taken immediately [...
Flashairlines and Judicial Cooperation
Posted on April 08, 2008Patrick Wautelet is a professor of law at the University of Liège (Belgium) and a specialist of private international law. The Flashairlines ruling of the Court of Appeals is a prime example of cross-border cooperation between courts and as such deserves to be commended...
Flashairlines and Transatlantic Ping Pong
Posted on April 08, 2008Christelle Chalas is a lecturer at Paris VIII Faculty of Law and the author of a book on Discretionary Exercise of Jurisdiction in Private International Law (in French). As a moth is drawn to the light, so is a litigant to the United-States. If he can only get his case into their court, he stands to [...
Rome I - Final Text Released
Posted on April 04, 2008As we noted in a previous post, the agreement reached by the European Parliament and the Council on the Rome I Regulation was transposed by the EP in its amendments at first reading to the initial Commission’s Proposal. Once revised by the lawyer-linguists, this modified version of the Regulation would have been adopted by the [...
Article: The Flight to New York: An Empirical Study of Choice of Law and Choice of Forum Clauses in Publicly-Held Companies? Contracts
Posted on April 04, 2008Theodore Eisenberg (Cornell Law School) and Geoffrey P. Miller (New York University) have on the NELLCO Repository posted a working paper titled “The Flight to New York: An Empirical Study of Choice of Law and Choice of Forum Clauses in Publicly-Held Companies? Contracts” (March 31, 2008, New York University Law and Economics Working Papers...
Seminar on PIL at the University of Johannesburg
Posted on April 04, 2008FACULTY OF LAW, UNIVERSITY OF JOHANNESBURG INSTITUTE FOR PRIVATE INTERNATIONAL LAW IN AFRICA Morning seminar on private international law Thursday 17 April 2008 An African private international law regime (?) ? conclusions and lessons from a decade of case law in thirteen African countries Mr R F Oppong (University of Leicester)foppong2000@yahoo...
Rome I - Should the UK Opt In?
Posted on April 03, 2008The Ministry of Justice has launched a public consultation on whether the UK should opt (back) in to the Rome I Regulation (see all Rome I entries on this site here.) The press release states: The Rome I proposal will provide clarity over which law applies if a dispute arises over a contract made between people [...
Flashairlines and Declaratory Relief Under French Law
Posted on April 01, 2008Emmanuel Jeuland is a professor of law at Paris I University (Panthéon-Sorbonne) and a specialist of civil procedure. In this post, I would like to offer some brief thoughts on the Paris Court of appeal?s judgment of the 6th of March 2008. It is my opinion that the legal foundation of the judgement as far [...
Flashairlines - Online Symposium
Posted on April 01, 2008In a recent post, I reported how the Paris Court of appeal accepted to decline jurisdiction in order to meet the jurisdictional criteria of a U.S. court and enable plaintiffs, most of whom were French, to get back to California and resume proceedings there...
Guest Editorial: Muir-Watt on Reshaping Private International Law in a Changing World
Posted on April 01, 2008April’s Guest Editorial is by Professor Horatia Muir-Watt: Reshaping Private International Law in a Changing World. Horatia Muir Watt is Professor of Private International and Comparative Law at the University of Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne). She prepared her doctorate in private international law (University of Paris 2, 1985) and was admitted to the agrégation in 1986...
The American Revolution and the European Evolution in Choice of Law: Reciprocal Lessons
Posted on March 30, 2008Symeon Symeonides (Williamette) has posted “The American Revolution and the European Evolution in Choice of Law: Reciprocal Lessons” on SSRN (forthcoming in Tulane Law Review, Vol. 82, No. 5, 2008.) Here’s the abstract: This Article is an invited contribution to a symposium held at Duke University Law School under the title “The New European Choice-of-Law Revolution: [...
New Book: Japanese and European Private International Law in Comparative Perspective
Posted on March 28, 2008A very interesting volume, collecting the contributions presented by prominent European and Japanese scholars at a conference organised in 2007 by the Max Planck Institute for Private Law in Hamburg, has been recently published by Mohr Siebeck: Japanese and European Private International Law in Comparative Perspective...
French Court Declines Jurisdiction to Transfer Dispute Back to U.S. Court
Posted on March 27, 2008On March 6th 2008, the Paris Court of Appeal agreed to decline jurisdiction in order to enable the plaintiffs to go back to California and resume the proceedings that they had initiated there. The U.S. Court had (almost) declined jurisdiction on the ground of forum non conveniens, but had fortunately made its decision conditional upon [...
French Judgment on Article 5(1) of the Brussels I Regulation, Part IV
Posted on March 23, 2008On March 5, 2008, the French supreme court for private matters (Cour de cassation) confirmed its previous case law characterizing exclusive distribution agreements as contracts which are neither sales nor provisions of services for the purposes of article 5(1) of the Brussels I Regulation...
Conferences: organized by ERA spring/summer 2008
Posted on March 18, 2008The Academy of European Law (ERA) organizes a number of private international law related conferences, seminars and courses during the spring and summer of 2008: 3rd European Forum for In-house Counsel, Brussels, 24-25 Apr 2008 Description from the ERA website: For the third consecutive year, ERA and ECLA are organising the European Forum for In-House Counsel, combining the pragmatism of [...
Max-Planck Events Spring 2008
Posted on March 14, 2008During the spring of 2008, the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law will organize several events: On 29 March 2008 the Max Planck Institute and the Claussen Simon Foundation will hold a colloquium on the Education of Jurists and Judges...
First issue of 2008?s Journal du Droit International
Posted on March 13, 2008The first issue of French Journal du Droit International (also known as Clunet) will be released shortly. It contains four articles dealing with conflict issues. The first is authored by Pascal de Vareilles-Sommieres, who teaches at Paris I University, and Anwar Fekini, who is a practising lawyer in Paris and Tripoli...
Latest Issue of ?Praxis des Internationalen Privat- und Verfahrensrechts?
Posted on March 11, 2008Recently, the March issue of “Praxis des Internationalen Privat- und Verfahrensrechts” (IPRax) was released. It contains the following articles/case notes (including the reviewed decisions): R. Wagner/B. Timm on the German ministerial draft bill on the law applicable to companies, juristic persons and associations (”Der Referentenentwurf eines Gesetzes zum Internationalen Privatrecht der Gesellschaften, Vereine [...
New Publication: Principles, Definitions and Model Rules of European Private Law
Posted on March 10, 2008Recently, Principles, Definitions and Model Rules of European Private Law, prepared by the Study Group on a European Civil Code and the Research Group on EC Private Law (Acquis Group), has been published. The abstract reads as follows: In this volume the Study Group and the Acquis Group present the first academic Draft of a [...
European Commission adopts Green Paper on Effective Enforcement of Judgments in the EU
Posted on March 10, 2008On 6 March, the European Commission adopted the Green Paper “Effective Enforcement of judgments in the European Union: The Transparency of Debtor assets”. As stated in the press release, Vice-President Franco Frattini, Commissioner responsible for Justice, Freedom and Security declared: ?The objective of this Green paper is to find possible measures at a European level to improve the [...
Fourth Issue of 2007?s Revue Critique de Droit International Privé
Posted on March 08, 2008The last issue of Revue Critique de Droit International Privé for 2007 was just released. It contains two articles dealing with conflict issues. The first is authored by Fabien Marchadier who lectures at the Law Faculty of Limoges University. It discusses the Contribution of the European Court of Human Rights to the Efficacy of the Hague [...
Nova Scotia Court of Appeal on Substance-Procedure Distinction
Posted on March 02, 2008In Vogler v. Szendroi (available here) the plaintiff, resident in Nova Scotia, was injured in a car accident in Wyoming. Three years later he issued legal process in Nova Scotia. This was inside the four-year Wyoming limitation period, which applied as part of the substantive law applicable to the claim (under the place of the [...
International Reach of French Attachments
Posted on March 02, 2008Can attachments reach foreign bank accounts? For the French, the answer had always been clearly negative, until the French supreme court for private matters (Cour de cassation) held in a judgment of 14 February 2008 that a French attachment could reach a bank account in Monte Carlo...
Interesting Conflicts Decision from the Sixth Circuit: COGSA or Hague-Visby?
Posted on February 29, 2008The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals recently issued an interesting conflicts decision on the competing applicability of COGSA rules or Hague-Visby Rules. According to Judge Karen Nelson Moore, writing for the panel: This case requires us to consider whether COGSA or the Hague-Visby Rules or both apply as a matter of law to the ocean [...
New Reference for a Preliminary Ruling on Brussels II bis
Posted on February 27, 2008Following the cases of Applicant C and Sundelind Lopez, a third reference for a preliminary ruling on Brussels II bis has been referred to the ECJ ? again (as Applicant C) by the Finnish Korkein Hallinto-oikeus (Case C-523/07, Applicant A). The present case concerns children who have their habitual residence in Sweden, live transitionally in Finland [...
Guest Editorial: Harris on ?Reflections on the Proposed EU Regulation on Succession and Wills?
Posted on February 27, 2008The second instalment of our 2008 series of Guest Editorials is by Professor Jonathan Harris: Reflections on the Proposed EU Regulation on Succession and Wills. Prof. Jonathan Harris is Professor of International Commercial Law and Deputy Head of the Law School at the University of Birmingham, UK...
New Articles for Early 2008
Posted on February 26, 2008It has been a little while since my last trawl through the law journals, and a few articles and casenotes have been published in the intervening period that private international law enthusiasts may wish to add to their reading list: J.M. Carruthers, “De Facto Cohabitation: the International Private Law Dimension” (2008) 12 Edinburgh Law Review 51 [...
Northern Cyprus and the acquis communautaire
Posted on February 23, 2008The Court of Appeal (Civil Division) has referred an interesting reference for a preliminary ruling to the ECJ on the application of the Brussels I Regulation with regard to judgments relating to land in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (Meletis Apostolides v David Charles Orams, Linda Elizabeth Orams, C-420/07): 1...
Comity at the Court: Three Recent Orders Seeking the View of the Solicitor General
Posted on February 21, 2008If the Justices are considering whether to grant a petition for certiorari, and they think the case raises issues on which the views of the federal government might be relevant?but the government is not a party?they will order a CVSG brief. ?CVSG? means ?Call for the Views of the Solicitor General...
Swiss Institute of Comparative Law: Conference on Rome I Regulation
Posted on February 19, 2008On Friday, 14th March, the 20th Journée de droit international privé, organised by the Swiss Institute of Comparative Law (ISDC) and the University of Lausanne (Center of Comparative Law, European Law and Foreign Legislations), will analyse the new Rome I Regulation, whose final adoption is expected in one of the first Council’s sessions in early [...
Article on the Economic Analysis of Choice of Law Clauses
Posted on February 18, 2008Stefan Voigt (Marburg) has written an interesting article titled “Are International Merchants Stupid? Their Choice of Law Sheds Doubt on the Legal Origin Theory” which has been published originally in the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, March 2008, Vol...
French Muslims Getting Divorced Back Home
Posted on February 12, 2008In 2007, the French supreme court for private matters (Cour de cassation) ruled five times on the recognition in France of Islamic divorces obtained in Algeria (judgments of 10 July 2007, 19 September 2007, 17 October 2007, 31 October 2007) or in Morocco (judgment of 22 May 2007)...
Replies to Green Papers regarding Matrimonial Property and the Attachment of Bank Accounts
Posted on February 12, 2008As stated on the website of the European Judicial Network, the replies received with regard to the Green Paper on conflict of laws in matters concerning matrimonial property regimes, including the question of jurisdiction and mutual recognition (COM(2006) 400 final) are now available at the EJN’s website...
Party Autonomy and Beyond: An International Perspective of Contractual Choice of Law
Posted on February 10, 2008Mo Zhang (Temple University) has posted “Party Autonomy and Beyond: An International Perspective of Contractual Choice of Law” on SSRN; it originally appeared in the Emory International Law Review, Vol. 20, No. 511, 2006. The abstract reads: As a popular choice of law doctrine, party autonomy allows the parties in international contracts (or foreign contracts) to [...
Publication: Forum Shopping in the European Judicial Area
Posted on February 08, 2008A new addition to the Hart Publishing private international law catalogue for 2008 is Forum Shopping in the European Judicial Area, a collection of essays by English and French scholars, edited by Pascal de Vareilles-Sommières (Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne)...
University of Milan: Prof. Pocar?s Lecture on the Conversion of the Rome Convention into an EC Regulation
Posted on February 07, 2008On Tuesday 12 February 2008, at 16.30, the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences of the University of Milan will host a lecture (in Italian) by Prof. Fausto Pocar (University of Milan, President of the ICTY) on “The Conversion of the Rome Convention on the Law Applicable to Contractual Obligations into a Community Regulation” (La [...
Rome III: EP LIBE Committee?s Draft Report on the Commission?s Proposal
Posted on February 04, 2008On 9 January 2008 Evelyne Gebhardt, Rapporteur in the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE), has released her Draft report on the Commission’s Proposal for a Council regulation amending regulation (EC) No 2201/2003 as regards jurisdiction and introducing rules concerning applicable law in matrimonial matters (COM(2006)399 of 17 July...
Austrian Reference for a Preliminary Ruling on the Brussels I Regulation
Posted on February 03, 2008The Austrian Supreme Court of Justice (Oberster Gerichtshof) has referred the following questions to the ECJ for a preliminary ruling: 1. Is a contract under which the owner of an incorporeal right grants the other contracting party the right to use that right (a licence agreement) a contract regarding ‘the provision of services’ within the meaning [...
PIL at law teachers? conference in Pretoria
Posted on January 31, 2008PIL abstracts of law teachers? conferenceA special session on Private International Law was held at the conference of the Society for Law Teachers of Southern Africa, held in Pretoria from 21 to 24 January 2008. The following papers were delivered: ? Classification and liberative prescription in private international law by Jan Neels ? The role of Private [...
Urgent Procedure Adopted for Preliminary Rulings in the Area of Freedom, Security & Justice
Posted on January 31, 2008The excellent EU Law Blog has noted the adoption of an urgent procedure for preliminary rulings in the area of freedom, security and justice. Their post, in part, states, Some time ago we posted a note about future amendments to the Rules of Procedure of the Court of Justice to provide for an urgent procedure for [...
Max-Planck Event: Brussels Jurisdiction and Common-Law Jurisdiction
Posted on January 27, 2008Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law organizes on 4 February 2008 (17:00) a guest lecture to be given by Professor Adrian Briggs (University of Oxford, UK). Professor Briggs’ lecture is titled ?Brussels Jurisdiction and Common Law Jurisdiction: understanding and misunderstanding what courts may be asked to do?...
Essay Competition in Private International Law
Posted on January 23, 2008We are pleased to announce The CONFLICT OF LAWS .NET Essay Competition in Private International Law Sponsored by Clifford Chance LLP and Hart Publishing The Competition is open to any student of a higher education institution anywhere in the world, writing in English on any aspect of private international law...
New Law on International Adoption in Spain
Posted on January 17, 2008The Spanish Parliament has adopted a new statute on international adoption on 28 December 2007. Professor Alegría Borrás reports on the site of the French Society of Comparative Legislation (in French). The Spanish text can be found here. [Click on the title above to view the full item on CONFLICT OF LAWS ...
Conference: The new European Choice-of-Law Revolution - Lessons for the United States?
Posted on January 17, 2008On Saturday 9th February 2008, Duke University School of Law will host an international conference entitled, "The New European Choice-of-Law Revolution: Lessons for the United States." Here’s the blurb: In a globalizing world of interdependent legal systems, determining which laws apply to international private transactions is crucial...
Article Challenges Canadian Approach to Jurisdiction
Posted on January 16, 2008Professor Tanya Monestier of Queen’s University has published an article challenging the approach in some of the leading cases, including Muscutt v. Courcelles, to the taking of jurisdiction over defendants outside the forum: see Tanya J. Monestier, “A ‘Real and Substantial’ Mess: The Law of Jurisdiction in Canada” (2007) 33 Queen’s L...
New French Books on the Conflict of Laws
Posted on January 13, 2008For long, scholars interested in the French conflict of laws had to refer to a few traditional books, in particular the treaty of Batiffol and Lagarde (8th edition 1993), but also the manuals of Loussouarn and Bourel (8th edition 2004, with professor Pascal de Vareilles-Sommières), of Pierre Mayer (9th edition 2007, with professor Vincent Heuzé), [...
Guest Editorial: Dickinson on Trust and Confidence in the European Community Supreme Court?
Posted on January 10, 2008Throughout 2008, CONFLICT OF LAWS .NET will play host to twelve guest editors: distinguished scholars and practitioners in private international law, who have been invited to write a short article on a subject of their choosing. It is hoped that these guest editorials will provide a forum for discussion and debate on some of the [...
Choice of Law in the American Courts in 2007: Twenty-First Annual Survey
Posted on January 05, 2008With the start of a new year, and the concomitant end of an old one, comes the twenty-first instalment of Symeon Symeonides‘ annual survey of US decisions relating to choice-of-law issues. It is, as always, both a rigorous piece of research and an excellent resource...
West Tankers, and Worldwide Freezing Orders
Posted on January 03, 2008There are two casenotes in the new issue of the Cambridge Law Journal worthy of mention. Firstly, Richard Fentiman (Cambridge) has written on “Arbitration and the Brussels Regulation” - discussing the recent House of Lords decision (and reference to the ECJ) in West Tankers Inc v...
The Long-Arm of the USPTO: A Significant Decision (and a Significant Dissent) from the Fourth Circuit
Posted on January 02, 2008When panel issues a 16-page decision, and Judge James Harvie Wilkinson III writes a 20-page dissent, people seem to take notice. In Rosenruist-Gestao E servicos LDA v. Virgin Enterprises Ltd., No. 06-1588 (4th Cir., December 27, 2007), Judge Wilkinson sharply derided his colleagues in holding that: “a foreign company that has no United States [...
Happy Christmas / Holidays
Posted on December 22, 2007On the assumption that no more items will be posted to Conflict of Laws .net before 25th December, and possibly 1st January (although we did, in fact, churn out quite a few posts in the festive period last year), I would like to wish everyone a Happy Christmas / Holiday, and a very Happy New [...
Some Political Drama in the Conflict of Laws in Canada
Posted on December 21, 2007The most recent chapter in the long-running and highly public dispute between businessman Karlheinz Schreiber and former Prime Minister of Canada Brian Mulroney involves significant conflict of laws issues. On December 20, 2007, Justice Cullity of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice released his decision holding that Schreiber?s claim was dismissed for lack of jurisdiction...
What Do We Really Know About the American Choice of Law Revolution?
Posted on December 21, 2007There is a substantial book review in the new issue of the Standard Law Review (Oct 2007, Vol. 60, Issue 1): What Do We Really Know About the American Choice-of-Law Revolution? by Hillel Y. Levin (Stanford). It provides a detailed critique of Symeon Symeonides’ most recent book, The American Choice-of-Law Revolution: Past, Present and [...
Fourth issue of 2007?s Journal du Droit International
Posted on December 20, 2007The fourth issue of the French Journal du Droit International (Clunet) has been released. It contains three articles dealing with private international law issues (the table of contents in French can be found here). First, the Journal offers the end of the article of Ms Legros (the first part of which was published in the third [...
Au Revoir to Renvoi?
Posted on December 18, 2007C.J.S. Knight has written a casenote in the Conveyancer and Property Lawyer on the High Court decision in Iran v Berend (Conv. (2007) November/December Pages 564-571). Here’s the abstract: Discusses the Queens Bench Division decision in Iran v Berend on whether renvoi has a place in choice of law cases concerning title to moveable property, in [...
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How do you recover money from a stop payment placed on a personal check given to you?
you can always take them to small claims court and sure them for 3 times the amo...
My job requires me to drive bank deposits up to two times a day using my own vehicle and gas. Although not too far, can should I be receiving compensation? One deposit run is required daily by company policy, but the man
you should be getting a mileage comp. I own my own company and I pay my employee...
My brother in law and his wife got into a domestic assault case, he is now in jail awaiting a trial. My mother in law has tried several times to see the grandchildren, but the wife will not let any of us see them. Is the
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Is it illegal for an 18 year old guy in california to date an 14 year old girl from arizona?
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